27th Scarlet Stiletto Awards: women’s crime and mystery short story competition

Nadine Garner, star of City Homicide, The Doctor Blake Mysteries and, most recently, The Forgotten Mysteries podcasts, will present Sisters in Crime’s 27th Scarlet Stiletto Awards in collaboration with crime author and performer, Jane Clifton. This year, a record 241 short stories written by Australian women competed for $10,460 (another record) in prize money. Twenty-seven …

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Rose Carlyle headshot

Never too late: Rose Carlyle

A few years ago I met Chris Cleave at a writers’ forum in Auckland. He had just published Everyone Brave is Forgiven and had opened the forum with a beautiful speech about the power of fiction in the age of hate. Sitting in the auditorium beside novelists Catherine Robertson and Vanda Symon, I felt like …

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May break my bones: Q&A with Katherine Firkin

Melbourne crime writer Katherine Firkin  spoke to Robyn Walton, Sisters in Crime Australia’s Vice-President, about her debut police procedural, Sticks and Stones (Bantam Australia, Penguin Books Australia). ________________________________________________________ Hi Katherine. Congratulations on your debut novel, Sticks and Stones. First a few questions that may give guidance to would-be crime authors. Sticks and Stones has been …

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27 stories shortlisted for Sisters in Crime’s 27th Scarlet Stiletto Awards

Sisters in Crime Australia is proud to announce that 27 stories by 25 authors have been shortlisted for its 27th Scarlet Stiletto Awards for best short stories. This year a record 241 stories short stories written by Australian women compete for a record $10,460 in prize money. The shortlisted authors (in alphabetical order) are: Hayley …

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Prescient pandemic theme in Sisters in Crime’s 20th Davitt Awards

It must have been something in the ether. Two of the winning books in Sisters in Crime’s 20th Davitt Awards officially awarded tonight (26 September) concern pandemics – Meg Mundell’s The Trespassers (University of Queensland Press), the winner of the Davitt (Best Adult Crime Novel) and Susan Hurley’s Eight Lives, (Affirm Press), winner of the …

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Emma Viskic: multi-award-winning author and clarinetist

Emma Viskic, a serial offender in the Sisters in Crime Davitt Awards, spoke to Sisters in Crime national co-convenor, Karina Kilmore, for this week’s Murder Mondays interview. (Click on the image below to go to the YouTube recording.) Emma was joint winner (with Dervla McTiernan) of the 2020 Davitt Award (Readers’ Choice) for Darkness for …

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Meg Mundell: novelist, journalist, and research fellow

Meg Mundell, who won winning the Davitt (Best Adult Crime Novel) in the recent awards, was this week’s guest for Murder Mondays interview with Sisters in Crime national co-convenor, Karina Kilmore. (Click on the image below to go to the YouTube recording.)         Like Karina, Meg hails from New Zealand and has …

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J. P. Powell, writer, archaeologist and historian

Sisters in Crime national co-convenor, Karina Kilmore, dug deep for this week’s Murder Mondays interview with J. P. Powell.  (Click on the image below to go to the YouTube recording.)                     J. P. (otherwise known as Judy) lives in the Sunshine Coast hinterland and had a …

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CONGRATULATIONS! Sisters in Crime member, Dinuka McKenzie, wins Banjo Prize

HarperCollins Publishers Australia has announced that the winner of its 2020 Banjo Prize –  a publishing contract, with an advance of $15,000 – is Dinuka McKenzie for her unpublished manuscript Flood Debris. Dinuka is a Sisters in Crime member from Heathcote (NSW). Here’s what HarperCollins had to say: Flood Debris is the first novel in …

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