Winners of SWANZ, USC and Mentorship awards

The New Zealand Writers Guild is honoured to announce
the WINNERS in the seventh annual SWANZ & USC

(Script Writer Awards NZ & Unproduced Script Competition)

Congratulations to our winners in nine categories at last night's 2016 SWANZ Awards ceremony.
Hosts Jackie van Beek and Jesse Griffin set a fun and furious pace entertaining our lively audience!

Thanks to our incredible sponsors NZ on Air, New Zealand Film Commission, South Pacific Pictures and Filthy Productions for making the SWANZ a platform to celebrate and recognise New Zealand Writers. Thanks also to amazing Taste Catering NZ for delicious food and wonderful service.

SWANZ Awards

South Pacific Pictures - Best Feature Film
Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Taika Waititi

Best Short Film
Every Moment, Gabriel Reid

Best Play
The Quiet Room, Renee Liang

Best Episode TV Series – Comedy
Step Dave Series 2, Episode 3, Shoshana McCallum

Best Episode TV Series – Drama
Westside Series 2, Episode 1, James Griffin

Best Factual Script – Film or TV Documentary
25 April, Leanne Pooley and Tim Woodhouse

Unproduced Script Competition (USC)

USC - TV Pilot
Firebug, David Mamea

USC - TV Pilot - Highly Commended
Best Friend Ever, Allan George
Wanted Men, Fiona Samuel

USC - Feature Film
The Floating World, Jacqueline Owens
Full list of nominees found on NZWG SWANZ page

NZWG Mentorship Award 2016

This year the NZWG Mentorship Award was presented to Bill Manhire, his son Toby Manhire accepted the award on his behalf.

Fiona Samuel - NZWG Board Member
" Tonights winner of the SWANZ Award for Mentorship is:
New Zealand's first Poet Laureate
A Fellow fo the Royal Society of NZ
A Companion of the NZ Order of Merit
An Arts Foundation Laureate
A Katherine Mansfield Fellow
Winner of the Prime Minister's Award for Literature
A five time winner of the NZ Book Award, and is
One of the few poets ever to reach the South Pole

While he was quietly accumulating honours and writing poems, he also established a creative writing course at Victoria University in 1975, which morphed into the Masters in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters in the year 2000, and it's a measure of his mana that most people know his qualification simply as 'The Bill Manhire Course'.

Bill's legacy as a mentor and an inspiration to new writers setting out on that particular, peculiar and often lonely path is extraordinary. There are many different kinds of writing, and many different kinds of writer, and Bill's course was a broad church - poets, playwrights, short story writers, novelists and screenwriters have all passed through to be enriched by Bill's teaching and then to share their riches with us.

The Vintner's Luck, The Orator, Lovelock's Dream Run, Novel About My Wife, Not Her real Name, The Rehearsal, The Luminaries - these are just a few of the novels, plays and films that Bill's students have written. As an identifier and encourager of writers, Bill Manhire is without peer in this country, and although his mantlepiece is clearly not empty, we are proud to add a New Zealand Writers Guild Mentorship Award to his groaning hoard."

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