Our warmest congratulations to author Tessa Duder, who has won this year's Prime Minister’s Awards for Literary Achievement – Fiction.
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| Tessa Duder |
Tessa Duder CNZM OBE writes for children and young adults and is also an author of short stories, plays and non-fiction. Her well-known Alex novels (adapted for film and television) are critically acclaimed and have been published internationally and republished again recently.
Oratia is proud to have published two of Tessa's works: the biography The Story of Sir Peter Blake in 2012, and the short-story collection Out on the Water in 2014.
Among Tessa's numerous distinctions are an OBE and the Storylines Margaret Mahy Medal. She won the 2003 Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship, was awarded an Artists to Antarctica Fellowship in 2007 and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Waikato in 2008.
In 2010, the Storylines Tessa Duder Award for young adult writers was established to recognise her outstanding contribution to children’s literature, both in her publishing output and her work to promote children’s books and publishing.
She was named a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (CNZM) for services to literature in 2020.
She is a past president of the New Zealand Society of Authors (PEN NZ Inc), a former Trustee and deputy chair of the Spirit of Adventure Trust and a Trustee of the Storylines Children's Literature Trust of New Zealand.
Click here to read more about the Prime Minister's Awards.
Peter Dowling
