New Zealand is a country of firsts, and Rotorua Noir was its debut crime fiction convention, held over the Australia Day weekend, 2019. The venue, appropriately the Shambles Theatre, was small, but a perfect confab resulted. Writers appeared from NZ, but also Australia (Michael Rowbotham), Iceland, Finland and the North of the British Isles. Rotorua …
‘You’re in love with love,’ my mother told me once. I must have been all of fourteen: flat-chested, grinning in shiny braces, complete with frightening, jutting headgear I wore at night. I went to girls’ school and I had no brothers. No men in the house at all. When my mother said that, about being …
Robyn Walton, Sisters in Crime’s Vice-President, spoke to long-term member, Sandi Wallace, about her latest rural crime novel, Into the Fog (Taut Press, 2018). Sandi, congratulations on the third novel in your Georgie Harvey and John Franklin series. For your setting you chose the Dandenong Ranges, about an hour’s drive east of Melbourne CBD. And …
Robyn Walton. Sisters in Crime’s Vice-President, spoke to Perth author Leigh Straw about her latest book, Lillian Armfield: How Australia’s First Female Detective took on Tilly Devine and the Razor Gangs and Changed the Face of the Force (Hachette, 2018) Hi, Leigh. Most Australians would not be able to name this country’s first woman police …
Philomena Horsley (Northcote, Vic), a medical anthropologist who specialises in autopsies, took out the 25th Scarlet Stiletto Short Story Award presented on Saturday night (24 November). Actor Kate Atkinson and author Cate Kennedy presented the awards before a hundred crime fans at a gala ceremony at Melbourne’s Thornbury Theatre. “It was a night of magic and …
A Body of Work, my second crime novel, is a police procedural with social twists, although there is scant in-depth detail about police methods. Rather, the novel focuses on the interactions of the people in the investigating team. Social themes explored include secret adoption as a way of dealing with an unwanted pregnancy; the personal …
Melbourne crime writer, Anna Snoekstra, spoke to Sisters in Crime’s Vice-President, Robyn Walton, about her latest thriller, The Spite Game (HQ Fiction, 2018). Hi, Anna. You sold the film rights to your first novel, Only Daughter. How’s that all going? Great! I’ve just gotten back from LA, where I was catching up with everything that …
Sisters in Crime mourns the death of poet and member, Judith Rodriguez, on 22 November at the age of 82. Judith was a fixture at Melbourne events over the past few years and was usually accompanied by her daughters Bec and Sibila, and, if she was down from Sydney, Zoë. Her warmth, wit and perspicacity attracted …
Cate Kennedy, who won the first two Scarlet Stiletto Awards in 1994 and 1995, gave an hilarious and subversive keynote address entitled “These heels are made for walkin’”, to the 25th Scarlet Stiletto Awards ceremony on Saturday night (24 November) at Melbourne’s Thornbury Theatre. Cate came up with an alterative to the award – the Scarlet Scuff …
The Sunday Age and Sydney Morning Herald published a feature by Thuy On on Sisters in Crime, Australian women’s crime writing and the Scarlet Stiletto Awards in M Magazine (18 November). Pictured is Sally Browne and scarlet stilettos in 2009. The body of evidence is mounting and the verdict is conclusive: Australian women writers are deadly. For …