Penguin New Zealand
Acclaimed NZ Novelist Maurice Gee Leads Great Year for Homegrown Fiction
Some wonderful home-grown New Zealand fiction has been the highlight of New Zealand Publishing Director Geoff Walker's 2009 programme. At year's end, Access Road by Maurice Gee, New Zealand's leading fiction writer was topping the bestseller chart and earning superb reviews. A story collection called The Man in the Shed by Lloyd Jones, author of the award-winning Mister Pip, showed a new side of this brilliant and original writer. The Trowenna Sea by Maori writer Witi Ihimaera was based on the little-known true story of a group of Maori prisoners dispatched to Tasmania as convicts and also topped the bestseller list. And earlier in the year, As the Earth Turns Silver by New Zealand-Chinese writer Alison Wong also revealed a little-known side of New Zealand history — the shameful treatment of Chinese migrants at the end of the nineteenth century.
Top 2009 Penguin NZ Non-Fiction Titles Range from the Garden to the Kitchen to a Psychic Medium
Alison Brook, Penguin NZ's non-fiction Publisher, points to four popular 2009 titles:
- Tui NZ Vegetable Garden by Sally Cameron
In a year when vegetable gardening became the hottest growing trend it is no surprise a book on how to grow herbs and vegetables would achieve some success. The Tui NZ Vegetable Garden has been successful beyond our most optimistic projections, sitting in the top 10 selling books since it was published in September. Best of all, it has been a genre buster, knocking the previous bestselling gardening book (now in its 78th edition!) from its slot at the top of the bestsellers. - Bake by Allyson Gofton
One of our top selling books of 2009, BAKE resonated with the public's desire to return to the kitchen and fill the house with the smells of home cooked baking. Our best-selling cookbook — ever! - Walking in Light by Kelvin Cruickshank
The biography of a psychic medium took the country by storm and spent a healthy 3 months in the list of top 10 selling books. Kelvin is a TV medium on "Sensing Murder", a show (now in its fifth series) which has been so popular it has out-rated All Blacks test matches! - Peter Gordon: A Culinary Journey
A Culinary Journey marked a special moment in our cooking list for 2009. Peter Gordon is known as the father of East-meets-West style fusion cuisine, and owns the uber-trendy Providores restaurant in London. Peter has penned a number of top selling cookbooks in the past, but this one was special to him — and us — because it was his culinary journey and how his unique culinary philosophy was influenced by his 20 years of travel through Asia, Europe and the Pacific.
Penguin NZ Nabs Two Montana Book Awards and the Sales and Promotional Support Prize at the Booksellers New Zealand Industry Awards
The Montana Book Awards were presented at a gala dinner ceremony in Auckland in July. The winners of the country's most prestigious awards for contemporary writing were chosen from more than 220 books submitted for the 2009 awards and Penguin New Zealand won two of them. Ladies, A Plate: Traditional Home Baking by Alexa Johnston won in the Lifestyle & Contemporary Culture category. He Pātaka Kupu te kai a te rangatira, the first-ever dictionary written entirely in te reo Māori, won the Maori Language Award.
At the Booksellers New Zealand Industry Awards the previous evening, Penguin Group NZ won the highly coveted award for Sales and Promotional Support. This award has eluded us for the past six years where we have historically been runner up to Random House. We were also delighted when our sales reps Rachel Cooper and Louise Crisp took out the awards for North Island Sales Rep of the Year and South Island Sales Rep of the Year respectively.