The winners of the second Six Pack competition were yesterday announced at the launch of NZ Book Month 2007. As well as receiving $5,000, the six winners' writing has been published in The Six Pack Two, which is available to buy in all bookshops for the bargain price of $6.

The winners are Faith Oxenbridge, Elizabeth Smither, Dave Armstrong, Tracey Slaughter, Jennifer Lane and Charlotte Grimshaw (pictured).The winners of the second Six Pack competition were yesterday announced at the launch of NZ Book Month 2007. As well as receiving $5,000, the six winners' writing has been published in The Six Pack Two, which is available to buy in all bookshops for the bargain price of $6.

The winners are Faith Oxenbridge, Elizabeth Smither, Dave Armstrong, Tracey Slaughter, Jennifer Lane and Charlotte Grimshaw (pictured).All manuscripts remained anonymous as they went through a rigorous assessment process and only 15 entries made it through to the finals. Five of the winners were chosen by a panel of judges, while the sixth was chosen by readers in an online poll.

The book has also been gifted to every library and secondary school in the country, and will be available for the first time in various formats for the visually impaired as well.

About the authors

Faith Oxenbridge (In the Back of a VW - Readers' Choice) has spent most of her life in Christchurch, with short stints in Auckland, Sydney, London and Israel. She has been a teacher, bookseller, cafe owner and sheep dagger, and still is a mother. She currently works for the Christchurch Arts Festival, writes theatre reviews for the NZ Listener and is completing a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of Canterbury. In the Back of a VW is from her collection of stories for her MFA, titled The Not Quite Right Club.

Elizabeth Smither (Kathy and Tim) was the first woman Te Mata Estate Poet Laureate (2001-2003) but she has also written four collections of short stories and four novels, most recently Different Kinds of Pleasure (Penguin, 2005). A new collection of poems, The Year of Adverbs, was published by Auckland University Press in August.

Charlotte Grimshaw (The Yard Broom) is the author of three critically acclaimed novels: Provocation and Guilt, Foreign City and a recent short story collection, Opportunity. In 2000 she was awarded the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship. She was a double finalist, and prizewinner, in the 2005 Sunday Star-Times Short Story Competition, and in 2006 she won the Bank of New Zealand Katherine Mansfield Premier Writer's Award for short fiction.

Dave Armstrong (Foodbanquet - from the novel The Scriptwriter) won Best New New Zealand Play in two consecutive years at the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards for The Tutor and Niu Sila (co-written with Oscar Knightley). His musical play King and Country has been performed throughout the country and on radio. Armstrong's television credits include Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby, Bro'town and Shortland Street. He has written one book, True Colours, about the 1996 general election, and is currently Writer in Residence at Victoria University.

Born in New South Wales, Jennifer Lane (Scout's Honour) crossed the ditch after meeting a Kiwi in 1995 and moving with him to Wellington. She is currently attempting to write 'the novel', from which Scout's Honour is an extract.

Tracey Slaughter (Note Left on a Window) had her first collection of poems and short stories, Her Body Rises, published by Random House in 2005. She has won the Bank of New Zealand Katherine Mansfield Novice Writer's Award, the Bank of New Zealand Katherine Mansfield Premier Writer's Award, the Aoraki Festival Poetry Competition and been highly commended in the Sunday Star-Times Short Story Competition. Slaughter studied at the University of Auckland and went on to teach there and at Massey University. She now writes full-time and lives in Thames with her partner and two young children.

3/9/07