Sisters in Crime’s Chair of Communications, Sara Hood, is standing down to travel the world so we have taken the opportunity to re-think our structure and press gang (!) more people into our team. Please welcome: Ani Allbutt, who joins as the new Chair, Communications. and Gill Thomas, who joins in the new role of Administration and Membership Manager.
Need a good book for the festive season? You can’t go past Scarlet Stiletto: The Fourteenth Cut, a collection of winning stories from this year’s competition, edited by Phyllis King.
Jacq Ellem, a member of the newly minted Tasmanian Chapter, will be hosting Murders Mondays in the New Year. Jacq is a bibliophile, copywriter, occasional broadcaster and award-winning podcaster, which sounds really wanky but is her only claim to fame.
It’s been a bumper year for women’s crime. And what better time to catch up than over the festive season. Sisters in Crime asked convenors, author members, Davitt Award judges, and winners to nominate their best holiday reads by women crime authors. We hope you enjoy the books they’ve nominated. Most are fairly recent but some are golden oldies.
A capacity crowd gathered on Saturday night (3 December) to celebrate Sisters in Crime’s 29th Scarlet Stiletto Awards at South Melbourne’s Rising Sun Hotel. Nicole Chamoun, star of Troppo, based on the book, Crimson Lake, by long-term member, Candice Fox, presented the awards, after first discussing her life in crime with award-winning author and podcaster, Vikki Petraitis.
A few bad apples gathered on Thursday 6 October 2022, withas well as some ring-ins from New Zealand, to celebrate the new Tasmanian Chapter of Sisters in Crime Australia at Frank’s Ciderhouse in the Huon Valley. Dr Angela Savage, CEO of Public Libraries Victoria, and Lindy Cameron, Vice-President of Sisters in Crime Australia were on hand to officially launch the new chapter.
Sisters in Crime Australia held its 2022 Annual General Meeting on Friday 28 October, following its Felony and Fun event at South Melbourne’s Rising Sun Hotel. It had convened a delayed 2021 AGM on Zoom only five months earlier but needed to get back in sync with the schedule required by Consumer Affairs Victoria. Nevertheless, it has broken many records!
Janna Thompson, one of Australia’s most distinguished philosophers, and a long-time member of Sisters in Crime Australia, decided to turn her hand to crime when the pandemic hit Melbourne in 2020.The result is Lockdown (Clan Destine Press), a novel which explores how the invisibility of older women can provide the perfect cover for criminal investigations. Janna put the finishing touches to Lockdown before just before her death from multiple brain tumours in June at the age of 79.
Seven of Australia’s most popular female crime writers converged on the South Coast in August for a Sisters in Crime two-day writers festival on August 27 and 28. Candice Fox, Vikki Petraitis, Sulari Gentill, Fleur Ferris, Ilsa Evans, Professor Caroline de Costa, and Dorothy Johnston debated all matters crime before 100 people packed into the Cobargo Hall and a live-streamed global audience.
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.