Sisters in Crime’s Davitt Awards triumph women crime writers

Perth-based author Dervla McTiernan won the best adult novel award for her debut Irish police procedural, The Rúin (HarperCollins Publishers Australia) at Sisters in Crime’s 19th Davitt Awards for best crime books by Australian women on Saturday night (31 August). McTiernan is one of the many Australian women’s crime writers enjoying massive popularity and attracting …

Read more

Murder She Wrote: A Tasmanian literary festival inspired by Agatha Christie

The Terror Australis Readers and Writers Festival (TAF2019) is Tasmania’s newest biennial literary festival and the first writers’ festival in the Huon Valley. The festival’s theme, Murder She Wrote, is inspired by Agatha Christie, the Queen of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. Festival director, crime writer (and Sister in Crime member) Dr L.J.M. Owen, …

Read more

“I Like My Subjects Dead”: Joanne Drayton

The biographer and the detective are not as far apart as you might imagine. This analogy has been made before, and there are much less generous ones. Famously, commentator, Janet Malcolm, likened the biographer to an ‘eavesdropper’, a ‘voyeur’, a ‘snoop’. Some times what I do feels uneasily close to these transgressive manifestations. Not literally, …

Read more

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, …

Read more

The power of the podcast – Rachael Brown

Rachael Brown was one of the crime writers who spoke at Hitlist on 3 July, the Wheeler Centre event about the current state of crime writing. Serial Davitt winner Emma Viskic compered the session which also included fellow Sister in Crime, Sulari Gentill, plus, Laura Elizabeth Woollett, Garry Disher, and Mark Brandi. I want to …

Read more

Headshot Sulari Gentill

Hit list: Sulari Gentill on optimism

Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre presented a brilliant session on the current state of crime writing on 3 July. As the official notice said: “It’s no mystery that Australian crime writers are on some kind of a rampage – some kind of a spree– filling bookshops, racing up bestseller lists and taking over big and small screens …

Read more