Davitt Awards 2025
Australia’s premier book awards for crime books written by Australian women. Full information here.
Sisters in Crime General
25th Davitt Awards: how to enter
For the best Australian women’s crime and mystery books of 2024 Note: contact details have changed. All enquiries should be sent to the judge co-ordinator Ruth Wykes. THE DAVITT AWARDS ARE NOW CLOSED. JUDGING IS UNDERWAY. ENTRY FEES Save 33% with EarlyBird entries from 1-30 November 2024. Full fee entries from 1 December 2024 to …
2024 AGM: Carmel Shute stands down as Secretary
Carmel Shute, who helped co-found Sisters in Crime Australia in 1991, stood down as Secretary at the 2024 Annual General Meeting on Friday 25 October, following its TV Noir event at South Melbourne’s Rising Sun Hotel. She is being replaced by former President, Moraig Kisler, who is fresh from a year’s break. Carmel will continue to work on programming. A committee of eight was elected unopposed.
Murder Monday: Natalie Conyer
Award-winning Sydney author, Natalie Conyer, is the subject of this Murder Monday. As ever, interviewed by Jacq Ellem.
Veteran cop Schalk Lourens is back in Shadow City. Now suspended and thinking of emigrating to Australia, whilst visiting his daughter in Sydney Lourens is swept up into a minefield of deceit and manipulation by an enemy more powerful and depraved than is imaginable. She talks about how she writes.
Why I turned to crime: Christine Gregory
Christine Gregory became attracted to New-Age ideas in her late teens. This largely involved visits to Bryon Bay to stay at the Arts Factory, late nights of drinking, and a full-throttle immersion into the alternative music scene of the noughties. Twenty-five years later, in an evening writing class the tutor asked students to create a scene incorporating all the five senses. She put pen to paper and like magic, the words flowed.
Author Spotlight: Writing a bold, wild woman
For the October Author Spotlight, New Zealand author Barbara Sumner spoke to Georgina Baron-Ross, about her debut novel, The Gallows Bird (Pantera Press). This novel whisks readers away to 19th-century London. Meet ‘Birdie,’ a young woman of lowly station with grand ambitions. Despite her humble beginnings, Birdie believes she is destined for finer things, driven by the legacy of her aristocratic mother. But then she becomes a convict bound for Botany Bay.
Patricia Wolf, Opal
For the October Crime Stack, Echo Publishing has kindly offered 20 copies of Opal, the thrilling third installment in the bestselling DS Lucas Walker series by Patricia Wolf, the Berlin-based author who hails from Mt Isa. A small mining community. A murderer at large. And a flood that has trapped them all . . . …
Murder Monday: Jane Sullivan
For the September Murder Monday, Sisters in Crime’s Jacq Ellem spoke to Jane Sullivan, crime author, and the literary columnist for Nine Newspapers. She has been a judge for Sisters in Crime’s Davitt Awards several times. Jane is the author of three novels, Little People, The White Star, and Murder in Punch Lane, her first crime novel, plus a memoir, Storytime. Murder in Punch Lane is set in Melbourne in 1868, and inspired by real events and people.
Sisters in Crime’s 24th Davitt Awards winners announced: Debut books triumph
Debut books triumphed at Sisters in Crime’s 24th Davitt Awards for best women’s crime and mystery books on Saturday night (31 August). Four of the six winning crime and mystery books were first-time forays into the genre: Monica Vuu (Sandfly, Tas) for Best Adult Novel for When One of Us Hurts (Pan Macmillan Australia); Amy …
Murder Monday: Liz Evans
For the August Murder Monday, Sisters in Crime’s Jacq Ellem spoke to Liz Evans, British journalist, author, former psychotherapist, and academic with a PhD in Creative Writing. Luckily, for us, she has moved to Australia. She has been awarded two Varuna Residential Fellowships and the Katharine Susannah Prichard Fellowship, as well as an Arts Tasmania grant for an Education Residency. Her debut novel is the wonderfully titled Catherine Wheel (Ultimo Press).