UK Society of Authors hands out prizes including a NZ author
19.06.09 from The Bookseller

Sebastian Faulks presented £60,500 in prize money to twenty-one writers on Thursday, 18th June 2009 at a reception at the Cavalry and Guards Club in London.
This year's Betty Trask Prize and Award for first novels went to Samantha Harvey for The Wilderness (Cape), worth £12,000, and Eleanor Catton (pic left) for The Rehearsal (Granta), worth £8,000.
Playwright Chris Hannan won the McKitterick Prize, worth £4,000, for his first novel MISSY (Chatto), a "vivid, picaresque tale of the American Wild West".
Judges Andrew Cowan, Lindsey Davis and Frances Fyfield delighted in "a roistering narrative, written with real assurance . . . the book moves from high farce to tragedy without drawing breath". Chris Hannan was born in Glasgow and now lives in Edinburgh.

The Somerset Maugham Awards featured three repeat winners: Adam Foulds, painter and writer Thomas Leveritt and Helen Walsh have all previously won Trask Awards. Another of the Somerset Maugham Awards went to Henry Hitchings, the Evening Standard’s theatre critic.
Lady Antonia Fraser presented Mark Bostridge with the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography (£5,000), and among this year’s other winners were Paul Farley and Eva Hoffman who have each been awarded a Travelling Scholarship.
Poets Bernard O’Donoghue, Alice Oswald, Fiona Sampson and Pauline Stainer each win a £1,500 Cholmondeley Award. While Liz Berry, James Brookes, Swithun Cooper, Alex McRae and Sam Riviere each picked up a £3,500 Eric Gregory Award.
Footnote.
The Rehearsal - Eleanor Catton - is published in NZ by Victoria University Press and is twice shortlisted in the Montana NZ Book Awards. Congratulations Eleanor and VUP.