MEDIA RELEASE
Provocative Book Encouraging Behaviour Change to Save Our Planet Wins Major Award
| Auckland professor of psychology Niki Harré has won this year’s $10,000 Ashton Wylie Mind Body Spirit Book Award for The Infinite Game, a work that teaches us how to live and work co-operatively together, for the good of ourselves and the planet. Niki Harré was honoured with the award in a ceremony held this evening at Auckland’s Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron. Awards’ convenor of judges Joan Rosier-Jones says Harré’s book is an intelligent, thoughtful, philosophical view of the difference between the finite and the infinite players in the modern world. “This is a book that will inspire readers to consider our common future particularly in sustainability and ecological context providing for human well being and to think about what is important to them and use that to inform how they live their lives with less concentration on competition and status and more emphasis on community,” she says. In The Infinite Game, Niki Harré asks us to imagine our world anew. What if we are all part of a different type of game entirely – a game in which playing matters more than winning, a game that anyone can join at any time, a game in which rules evolve as new players turn up. Deeply informed by psychological research and a life of social activism, Niki Harré’s provocative book teaches us all how we might live life as an infinite game. “This year’s finalists were of exceptionally high quality, each of them beautifully produced, compelling works. It made our job in selecting a winner and the runner’s up very difficult,” says judge Joan Rosier-Jones. Matamata resident Averil Richardson won the Unpublished Manuscript category for her work The Love Path. Joan Rosier-Jones says this year’s Unpublished Manuscript winner uses all of her varied life experiences to produce a well-written, soundly researched work which is also based on empirical evidence. “The Love Path takes the reader step by step through the exploration of the development of love in humans over a lifetime. Each step has its own dynamic and requires a specific attitude and skill to master. Using Carl Jung’s insight into the integration of science and religion, the manuscript offers us all much food for thought. “Each of the shortlisted manuscripts are from writers that hold great promise and we sincerely hope they are published and received by a wide audience.” The judging panel, comprising publisher Bob Ross, writer Joan Rosier-Jones and writer and publisher Keith Hill were unanimous in their overall choice of the winning works. |
The 2019 Ashton Wylie Mind Body Spirit Book Awards’ winners and runners’ up are:
| Book category: |
| WINNER – The Infinite Game by Niki Harré (Auckland University Press) |
| RUNNERS’ UP – |
- Into the World: A Handbook for Mystical and Shamanic Practise by Leila Lees(Lasavia Publishing Ltd)
- Veil Over Light: Selected Spiritual Writings by Joy Cowley (FitzBeck Publishing)
- Standing Upright Here: Global Ethics for the 21st Century by Gwen S Francis(Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd)
- He Atua Wahine at the Source of Ancient M?ori Healing Wisdom in Aotearoa, New Zealand by Charlotte Mildon (Tamariki Ora Books Ltd)
| Unpublished Manuscript Category: |
| WINNER – The Love Path by Averil Nicole Richardson |
| RUNNERS’ UP – |
- The Time Lizard’s Archaeologist by Trisha Hanifin
- The Language of Yin by Gabrielle Harris
- You Are Loved: Extraordinary Things Happening to Ordinary People by Anca Joicey
- Deva: The Song at the Heart of Matter by Jacquelyn E. Lane
| A record number of 57 entries were received in this year’s Unpublished Manuscript category. |
The Ashton Wylie Charitable Trust was established following the death of Ashton Wylie in 1999. Ashton, an Auckland businessman, was a philanthropist with a wide range of interests particularly in the area of spirituality, personal development and positive relationships.
Ashton Wylie believed that if one wanted to change the world, one had to first change oneself.
The Awards are unique in New Zealand for their encouragement of writing in the mind body spirit genre.
For further information please visit: www.awct.org.nz
For interviews with winners, images or more information, please contact: Penny Hartill – hPR, 021 721 424, penny@hartillpr.co.nz
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