Domestic noir goes bush@8pm Friday 27 September, Rising Sun Hotel

Kylie Kaden, Petronella McGovern and Felicity McLean will talk to Karina Kilmore-Barrymore  on Friday 27 September at South Melbourne’s Rising Sun Hotel about how home and family can be a cauldron for crime, bringing with it abductions, incarcerations, infidelity and missing children – even in the apparent safety of small rural and coastal towns. Come along early and …

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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, …

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Women crime writers clean up at the Ned Kelly awards

Breaking news from Jason Steger,  The Age Literary editor, re the Ned Kelly Awards presented by the Australian Crime Writers Association on Friday 6 September. Women writers have made a killing at the Ned Kelly crime-writing awards, taking out all three prizes for the first time. The Neds were presented on Friday as part of BAD: Sydney …

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The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: Kylie Kaden

While I’ve been a little unfaithful (more than once), it’s fair to say that I’m in a committed relationship with crime. Crime novels, that is. The signs that I’d be a crime buff were there since adolescence. When my friends were off reading Babysitters’ Club, I preferred the company of Dr Kay Scarpetta. What’s not …

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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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The joys of writing a courtesan sleuth: Q&A with M.J. Tjia

Brisbane author M.J. Tjia talks to Sisters in Crime’s Vice-President, Robyn Walton, about her books She Be Damned (Pantera, 2017) and A Necessary Murder (Pantera, 2018) Hello, M.J. Sisters in Crime Australia got to know you in 2017 when you won the History and Mystery category in our annual short story competition, the Scarlet Stiletto Awards. …

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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 …

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The virtues of “bum glue”: Carmel Reilly

I’m a children’s educational writer by trade, but recently I’ve just released a crime-ish adult book, Life Before. People ask me how the two types of writing mesh together? Has being an educational writer been a help or a hindrance to writing for adults? My answer to that is that my background is probably more …

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