Sydney-based award-winning author Dinuka McKenzie will present Sisters in Crime’s 32nd Scarlet Stiletto Awards for best short stories, after first discussing her life in crime with award-winning author Amanda Hampson.
Join us to celebrate new crime writing by Australian women: Friday 21 November, William Angliss Institute, Melbourne.
This year, 231 short stories have competed for 14 awards for the $13,050 prize pool. Thirty-one stories* by 30 authors have been shortlisted. Each author will receive a framed certificate, and the winner of the 1st Prize will also take home ‘The Shoe’– a scarlet stiletto trophy with its steel heel plunged into a perspex mount.
“I cannot wait to be part of the Sisters in Crime 2025 Scarlet Stiletto awards ceremony. It is such an iconic event and a much-loved part of the crime writing calendar. I am honoured to be invited to present the awards for this year’s winners,” McKenzie said.
Dinuka McKenzie is the author of the Detective Kate Miles crime series, The Torrent, Taken and Tipping Point, published in Australia and the UK. She is the winner of the 2020 HarperCollins Australia Banjo Prize. The first novel starts with Kate heavily pregnant and a week away from maternity leave; the second and third show her struggling on multiple fronts but still coming through to solve complex crimes with grace and courage.
McKenzie’s writing has been shortlisted for Sisters in Crime’s Davitt Awards, the Bad Sydney Crime Danger Awards, and longlisted for the Richell Prize. Her short fiction appeared in the 2022 Dark Deeds Down Under Crime and Thriller Anthology. She lives with her family in Southern Sydney on Dharawal country.
Host, Melbourne-based author Amanda Hampson, has been writing professionally for more than thirty years and is the bestselling author of nine novels, including The Tea Ladies, The Cryptic Clue, and The Deadly Dispute. A runaway bestseller, The Tea Ladies won the 2024 Danger Award for Best Crime Fiction and was shortlisted for the 2024 Davitt Awards (Best Adult Crime) and the 2024 Ned Kelly Awards (Best Fiction). The fourth in the series, The Model Murder, is out in April.
Emerita Professor Christina Lee, a two-time shoe winner, will present the Judges’ Report.
“The Scarlet Stiletto Awards are remarkable in their ability to discover outstanding criminal talent. Winning a Scarlet Stiletto Award has often been a springboard to a literary career. To date, 5008 stories have been entered, with 34 Scarlet Stiletto Award winners – including category winners – going on to have novels published,” she said.
“Well-known authors who got their start with the Scarlet Stiletto Awards include Cate Kennedy, Tara Moss, Aoife Clifford, Ellie Marney, Angela Savage, and Anna Snoekstra. For Dervla McTiernan, just being shortlisted in 2015 gave her the impetus to finish five drafts of her first novel, The Rúin, and put her on the road to becoming a global publishing sensation.”
Lee said that the range and variety of stories this year were outstanding.
“There were bodies in all manner of libraries, retributions fast and slow, mysteries in historical settings and faraway places. There were stories set in cities and deserts, the future and the past, worlds real and imagined. The protagonists were women, children, animals, and fantasy creatures. The authors’ tone ranged from light and hilarious to spooky and terrifying.
“There are stories from this year that will live forever in my head, stories in styles that I might never have chosen to read, but devoured with pleasure when they were assigned. Judging was, as always, a great joy, an education, and a chance to reflect on one’s own limited range of preferences and experiences.”
Lee urged guests to go wild in scarlet or at least sport a splash.
“We will collectively look fantastic. As they say, better red than dead! The name, Scarlet Stiletto Award, is in the grand tradition of crime writing awards, such as the Silver Dagger in the UK, but we love the way the name combines the femininity of the stiletto shoe with the deadly speed of the stiletto knife and the sauciness of scarlet women.”
Dinuka McKenzie will also launch Scarlet Stiletto: The Seventeenth Cut, an e-book of the 2025 winning stories, published by Clan Destine Press.
William Angliss Institute, Conference Centre, 5th Floor, Building A, 555 La Trobe Street, Melbourne
Tickets: $70. Shortlisted authors $40. Vegetarian/vegan/gluten-free and other dietary requirements catered for). Drinks at bar prices.
Men or ‘brothers-in-law’ welcome.
Bookings
Please book individually or for groups of up to 10 through Eventbrite by Monday 17 November, 12 noon.
Sun Bookshop stall
Sisters in Crime members receive a 10% discount
Additional information
Carmel Shute 0412 569 356
admin@sistersincrime.org.au
2025 Shortlisted Stories
*Lara Bailey for Game Face; Alison Birrane for Bill Came Due; Linda Brandon for The Spanish Connection; Laree Chapman for Killing Crows; Sue Clapton for One Wrong; Natalie Conyer for The Ghost Detective and for Here For You; Kathryn Errey for The Spinster Who Came Down Off the Shelf; Dawn Farnham for Requiem for the Innocent; Liz Filleul for A Time for Crime; January Gilchrist for The Art of Letting Go; Kath Harper for Cat and Mouse; Julia Harris for Return or Die; Megan Heyward for Small Treacheries; Nette Hilton forWithout a Word; Jacqui Horwood for Rebel Girl; Tegan Huntley for Vanish; Alyssa Mackay for Nan and Lila Investigate a Murder; Sara Mayo Tighe for Franklin Has Questions; Julia Miller for The Prize; Merryl Parker for Dingo; Alison Pascoe for The Boss That Wasn’t; Helen Richardson for Washed Up; Bridget Robertson for The Outsider; Sally Ross for Reasonable Doubt; Vicki Skidmore for A Friend in Need; Sandra Thom-Jones for Der Hölle Rache; Nikki Thompson-McWatters for Why?; Katrina Watson for Affairs in Order; Jennifer White for The Last Chapter; and Amber Woodburne for A Midnight Murder.