Most writers return from retreats with renewed enthusiasm rather than finished manuscripts. But enthusiasm is underrated. After months of struggling with that Gothic novel, I’d forgotten that writing could feel urgent and exciting. Sometimes the most valuable thing about a retreat is how much it changes your perspective on the writing life itself.
Over 140 Sisters in Crime and Brothers-in-Law gathered at the Hotel Windsor’s Grand Ballroom on Sunday (28/9) for Fabulous, feisty, fun & Phryne to pay tribute to the life and legacy of Kerry Greenwood. It was a grand location and a grand occasion. Almost everyone was ‘frocked up for Phryne’ – or ‘suited up’, as the case may be. As the host of the event, Sisters in Crime’s Ambassador Sue Turnbull remarked, Kerry would have been proud, and jealous she could not be there.
For Murder Monday Sisters in Crime’s Jacq Ellem spoke to award-winning copywriter, content writer and author, Meeti Shroff Shah, who is based in Mumbai and is the creator of the Temple Hill mystery series.
Sisters in Crime WA will debut at the Big Sky Readers and Writers Festival in Geraldton in October 2025. The festival has warmly welcomed the initiative, and the group is thrilled to be part of the event. You’ll catch the Sisters speaking on Saturday 25 October, 4-6 pm, at Batavia Brewery, 60 Fitzgerald Street, Geraldton. Free . You can also stay on a meal,
Fremantle Press is generously donating twenty copies of Hot Ground by Lisa Ellery for this month’s Crime Stack. Detective Jessy Parkin – sent to policing purgatory in the aftermath of a tainted investigation – is tasked with finding Max Cochrane, a veteran prospector who has vanished into thin air.
Police procedurals have been a staple of crime fiction since Wilke Collins’ The Moonstone in 1868. Australian women crime writers continue in the grand tradition, but adding new elements – women detectives, deadly small-town secrets, and different takes on violence against women.
A stolen baby, a stolen corpse, and a missing woman are at the centre of the novels by Vikki Petraitis, Sarah Bailey, and Rachel Givney – and the authors will reveal all to Philomena Horsley.
Sisters in Crime’s roving reporter Lucy Sussex is attending the crime festival Bloody Scotland in September. As a taster, a wee dram, she interviewed Tartan noir author Denise Mina who has produced twenty award-winning crime novels, plus plays, comics, and graphic novels since 1996.
Melaleuca is a beautifully written, absorbing crime novel that introduces us to a stunning new voice to Australian women’s crime fiction. Angie Faye Martin is a stunning new voice and here she writes about how she got to here and why.
When Briony first meets Ren, he is standing in the freezing sea at the edge of their tiny town. Ren hasn’t been home for a decade but has returned to be with his dying father. Briony won’t leave, hoping that Sarah, her missing sister, will one day reappear. This is an extraordinary debut, a story of hope and survival.
A security guard dies in a detention centre. A woman dares to speak out and stand up. This is an important and moving story about displacement and about the lengths you’ll go to find safety and love. And home.