Carmel Shute
At the age of 17, Lily Arthur was forcibly taken away from the man she loved and planned to marry – for the ‘crime’ of being pregnant. She was incarcerated by the state to work indefinitely in a notorious Magdalene laundry in Brisbane, and her child was given away to strangers. She spent decades seeking justice for the 150,000+ women who had their children taken away. She recounts her struggles in Dirty Laundry.
Entries are now open for the 2023 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. Now in its 38th year, the Awards celebrate the country’s finest literary offerings, with prizes for fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, writing for young adults, Indigenous writing, and the overall Victorian Prize for Literature, worth an additional $100,000 – the single most valuable literary award in the country. …
Parminder Nagra (Bend it like Beckham) plays DI Rachita Ray with restraint. She is a detective promoted to Homicide as a token dark person. She has been brought in against the wishes of her bosses. They do not support her. She sucks it up. In her private life, she is equally restrained. I don’t love DI Ray but I want a second series. I want to see her succeed … I want those in charge to be made accountable. Is this misdirected fury at Morrison?
Before You Knew My Name by Jacqueline Bublitz is narrated by a young dead woman in New York. The book has won an amazing two Davitt Awards – for Best Debut and Readers’ Choice, as judged by the 500+ members of Sisters in Crime. Jacqueline splits her time between Melbourne and New Zealand and, luckily for us, crossed the ditch to accept the awards.
S. D. Hinton didn’t know she was dyslexic until she was an adult. She went through school in an era where dyslexia was rarely recognised, and poorly understood, if it was. Sufferers were usually labelled as inattentive or not very bright. That constrictive label, reinforced from prep, became part of who she was. Find out how she put her disability to good use – and how it adds to her creativity.
Debut books in the crime and mystery genre scooped all six awards in Sisters in Crime’s 22nd Davitt Awards on 27 August – Charlotte McConaghy’s Once there Were Wolves; Leanne Hall’s The Gaps; Nicki Greenberg’s The Detective’s Guide to Ocean Travel; Jacqueline Bublitz’s Before You Knew My Name (two awards); and Kate Holden’s, The Winter Road.
Melbourne author, Megan Goldin, has developed an international reputation for her gripping psychological thrillers. All are set in the United States. Here latest thriller. her fourth – Stay Awake – is just out with Michael Joseph. A magazine writer wakes up in the back of a taxi with no idea where she is or how she got there. She soon finds herself on the run for a crime she doesn’t remember committing …
I really wanted to consider how much we can rely on other people, and how self-interest can be a corrupting influence. But there were other things I was wondering about as well and I think those wonderings worked their way into the mysteries in the plot. For instance, living as a colonising people, what should our relationship be to the land that we only claim to own because our ancestors stole it?
Stripped down to its most basic form, crime fiction is about concealing information from the reader, and then gradually revealing it. This is one of the reasons why the genre tends to favour telling its stories through a single point of view character, often the detective, in first person or close third person.
Thirty-three books on Sisters in Crime’s shortlist for its 22nd Davitt Awards for the best crime and mystery books! Not all that excessive given that 169 books have been in contention. The Davitts are riding the crest of an enormous wave of popularity for crime writing by Australian women. Women like writing it, the publishers like printing it, and we all love reading it.