Kiwi Honoured by UK Society of Authors

Kiwi Eleanor Catton Honoured by UK Society of Authors

Eleanor Catton, author of "The Rehearsal" (Victoria University Press, NZ and Granta, UK) has won the UK's Betty Trask Award worth £8,000.

Her story of a high-school sex scandal and its myriad consequences has been hailed by critics, with Louise O'Brien NINE TO NOON BEST BOOKS OF 2008, calling it, "My favourite New Zealand novel of the year."

"The Rehearsal" has been nominated in the fiction and best first book of fiction categories of the Montana New Zealand Book Awards to be announced on 27 July in Auckland.

Eleanor has signed contracts with two prestigious international publishers, with her UK publisher Granta about to release their edition of "The Rehearsal" in July. She is also due to appear at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and at a number of literary festivals in North America.

The Betty Trask Prize and Award - Betty Trask left a bequest to the Society of Authors in 1983 to fund a prize for first novels written by authors under the age of 35 in a traditional or romantic, but not experimental, style. The prize money must be used for foreign travel. Trask Prize: Samantha Harvey for The Wilderness (Cape) - £12,000 Trask Award : Eleanor Catton for The Rehearsal (Granta) - £8,000 Judges: Terence Blacker, Rachel Cusk and Joanna Kavenna

ENDS

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