This year's Montana New Zealand Book Awards (local vintners Montana Wines are a co-sponsor along with the nation's booksellers, so there's the name explained) include two books that are about to be published in the United States. In fact, I'm almost positive I've seen a finished copy of Lloyd Jones's Mister Pip, the grand prize fiction winner, come through my maildrop from the Dial Press in the last week or so, and I suspect that William Morrow will probably step up the distribution of galleys for Rachael King's The Sound of Butterflies after its victory in the first fiction category. Apart from Janet Frame, most of the other winners are unlikely to be familiar to North American readers*, but it's worth noting that Victoria University Press snagged both the runner-up spots in the fiction category, as well as publishing the winner of the debut poetry award.

*On second thought, that's not entirely fair to Damien Wilkins, the Wellington-based author as opposed to the Seattle-based hoopster, who did get Harcourt and Holt to publish his first two novels here in the mid-'90s, although the NYTBR's opinion went from respectful reservations to vocal unenthusiasm. Apparently he got better.