Thanks to a $35,000 Copyright Licensing (CLL) Writer's Award, a major new non-fiction work - Looking for Darwin by Lloyd Spencer Davis - will be published this year.Thanks to a $35,000 Copyright Licensing (CLL) Writer's Award, a major new non-fiction work - Looking for Darwin by Lloyd Spencer Davis - will be published this year.Two more non-fiction writers now have an opportunity to win the same prize in 2007. New Zealand writers of non-fiction books are invited to apply for two awards worth $35,000 each in this year's Copyright Licensing Ltd (CLL) Writers' Awards.

Dr Davis says that awards for non-fiction works are scarce, making the CLL prize much-coveted and of considerable value.

"This award gave me the two most treasured commodities for a writer: time and freedom, enabling me to write a science book cum travel memoir that unravels Darwin and Darwinism," says Dr Davis, who is associate professor of zoology at the University of Otago and author of the award-winning children's book, The Plight of the Penguin (2002).

The CLL Writers' Awards were established in 2002 and are financed from copyright licensing revenue collected by CLL on behalf of authors and publishers. Applicants must be New Zealand citizens or permanent residents and writers of proven merit.

Davis' Looking for Darwin is the first book to be published by a CLL Writers' Award winner.

Works are in progress from all of the previous CLL Writers' Award winners. When finished, they will provide New Zealand with important cultural, literary and historical insights. Other former winners are: