Wellington author Peter Riordan won the Travcom Travel Book of the Year Award for Gods of the Stones – Travels in the Middle East (David Bateman Publishing).
The Cathay
Pacific Travel Media and Travel Book awards are organised by Travcom (New Zealand
Travel Communicators) to celebrate excellence in travel writing and
photography.
Anderson took
top spot with his story Horse Sense published in NZ Life and Leisure
magazine. Anderson is an Auckland-based writer currently working for the
Sunday Star Times. He has travelled extensively through Indonesia, India,
South America and Africa. His writing and photography have been published
in magazines and newspapers throughout the country. Last year he was
named junior reporter of the year at the Canon Media Awards and has been a
finalist in the junior feature writing category two years in a row.
'Travel
writing should be about more than the personal experience of being in a place,'
said chief writing judge Chris Moss, editor of Time Out magazine's travel
section and a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph. 'The best travel
journalism also teaches something, takes the reader on an inner journey, and
focuses on a theme, idea or area in a fresh way - and it must also be
well-written. Charles Anderson's 'Horse Sense' took me back to a place I have
visited and showed me its people, its culture, its economy and its Horse Fair
in an original and engaging way. A deeply enjoyable read and a deserved winner
in a year in which there were several very strong submissions.'
Chris Moss
judged all travel writing categories excluding the New Travel Writer of the
Year award, which was judged by Susan Buckland. She is an award-winning
travel writer whose stories and photographs are published in New Zealand and overseas.
The winner of the AA Directions New Travel Writer of the Year Award was David
Lillie with An Icy Embrace.
The winner of Cathay Pacific Travel
Photographer of the Year Award is Natasha Martin, a photographer for the Timaru
Herald. She went on a Rotary Group Study Exchange trip to India last year
where she shot the portfolio that won her the overall award.
The
photography awards were judged by: Auckland photographer Julia Thorne, a
three-decade survivor of the freelance photography and journalism world and one
of the early instigators of the Travcom Photography Awards; Gareth Eyres,
freelance editorial and travel photographer, and twice previous winner of
the Cathay Pacific Travel Photographer of the Year Award; and Bela
Trussell-Cullen, a veteran magazine designer and art director, who has worked
for many years on Metro, North & South and is currently art director of New
Idea magazine.
Wellington author Peter Riordan won
the top prize at the tenth annual Travcom Travel Book of the Year Award for Gods
of the Stones – Travels in the Middle East (David Bateman
Publishing). Christchurch writer Pat Deavoll received a Highly Commended
certificate for Wind from a Distant Summit (Craig Potton Publishing).
Riordan has been a previous runner-up of this award in 2007, with his book Strangers in My Sleeper.
The Travcom Travel Book of the Year
Award was judged by: writer, editor, book promoter, and teacher Dorothy
Vinicombe; Paul Hewlett, a writer and public relations consultant from Auckland
and a member of the Board of New Zealand Book Month; and Finlay Macdonald,
journalist, broadcaster, former editor of the New Zealand Listener and former
commissioning editor with Penguin New Zealand.
The awards
were hosted by Te Radar (Andrew J Lumsden), award winning
satirist, documentary maker, writer, stage and screen director, failed
gardener, television presenter and amateur historian.
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