Joanne Drayton: Award-winning biographer with a criminal bent

New Zealand-born Melbourne based author and reviewer, Lucy Sussex, turns her gaze back across the ditch to Joanne Drayton who is presenting Sisters in Crime’s 19th Davitt Awards on Saturday 31 August in Melbourne. (Click here to book.)  New Zealand writer Joanne Drayton is primarily a biographer, her interests ranging from art to true crime, …

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Ellen Davitt reincarnated at Geelong Cemetery

Sisters in Crime is thrilled to discover that Geelong Cemeteries Trust has created a unique walking tour of the Geelong Eastern Cemetery, called History Alive, which features Ellen Davitt, author of Australia’s first full-length mystery novel, Force and Fraud, in 1865. Visitors are guided around by actors playing the parts of ‘residents’ of the cemetery, …

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Crime across the ditch: Lucy Sussex reports on Rotorua Noir

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 …

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Killing it – Australia’s deadliest female writers

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 …

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