Sisters in Crime Australia announces
its shortlist for
the 13th Davitt Awards for the best crime books
by Australian women
This year 49 books, published in 2011, competed for five Davitt Awards:
Best Adult Crime Fiction, Best YA Crime Fiction, Best True Crime,
Readers' Vote and the new, to 2012, Best Debut Crime.
The winners will be announced at the Gala annual Davitt Award Dinner
at the Celtic Club in Melbourne on Saturday 1 September, 7pm.
Special guest presenter - and interview subject for the night - will be award-winning
Swedish crime writer Ǻsa Larsson.
The Davitt Awards are handsome carved & polished wooden trophies featuring
the front cover of the winning book under perspex.
This year marks the first time Sisters in Crime Australia has announced
a shortlist for the awards. They are:
Davitt Award: Adult Fiction
Jaye Ford, Beyond Fear (Bantam/Random)
Sulari Gentill, A Decline in Prophets (Pantera Press)
Carolyn Morwood, Death and the Spanish Lady (Pulp Fiction Press)
Jennifer Rowe, Love Honour & O'Brien (Allen & Unwin)
Kim Westwood, The Courier’s New Bicycle (Harper Voyager)
Helene Young, Shattered Sky (Hachette Australia)
Davitt Award: Children’s/Young Adult
Ursula Dubosarsky, The Golden Day (Allen & Unwin)
Nansi Kunze, Dangerously Placed (Random House)
Meg McKinlay, Surface Tension (Walker Books)
Davitt Award: True Crime
Wendy Lewis, The Australian Book of Family Murders (Pier 9/Murdoch Books)
Liz Porter, Cold Case Files: Past crimes solved by new forensic science (PanMacmillan)
Eligible books in all categories compete for the Davitt Award for Debut Crime, the first time Sisters in Crime will present such an award.
The only exception is Scarlet Stiletto: The Second Cut (Clan Destine Press), the second volume of winning stories from Sisters in Crime’s annual short story competition, which is eligible for a Davitt Readers’ Choice only. This is voted by its 550+ members.
The ‘wrangler’ of the Davitt judges, Tanya King-Carmichael, said that the surge in young adult and children’s crime fiction by women was notable.
“For the first time, the number of children’s/young adult crime novels (18) nearly equals the number of adult crime novels (22) and this is without anything in the league of Gabrielle Lord’s 11-book nomination for her Conspiracy 365 series last year,” she said.
“The strength of children’s/young adult crime fiction is reflected not just in the numbers of books being published but in the quality of the writing which grows more compelling and more imaginative each year.”
The Gala Davitt Dinner
Prior to the award presentations on September 1,
Ǻsa Larsson will talk to Professor Sue Turnbull about her life in crime.
Larsson started out as a tax lawyer, a profession she shares with the heroine
of her novels, Rebecka Martinsson. Her first novel, The Savage Altar, inspired the 2007 Swedish film, Solstorm. Her second novel, The Blood Spilt (2007), won the Best Sweidish Crime Novel Award. Other books in translation include The Black Path (2008)
and Until Thy Wrath be Past (2011).
Sue Turnbull, the Professor in Media and Communications, University of Wollongong Studies, is also a National Co-Convenor of Sisters in Crime and crime columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald.
Reviewing The Savage Altar, Professor Turnbull wrote: “...this is a beautifully executed book which gathers momentum as it toboggans towards a dramatic conclusion in the snow. Henning Mankell may not be the only cunning Swede on the block.”
A crowd of over 100 is expected at the gala dinner and award ceremony.
The Davitts are named in honour of Ellen Davitt (1812-1879) who wrote Australia’s first mystery novel, Force and Fraud, in 1865.
Davitt Award Gala Dinner
Venue: Celtic Club, corner La Trobe and Queen Streets, Melbourne
Dinner/event Tickets: $50.
All drinks at bar prices.
Bookings: close Monday 27 August, so book early to avoid disappointment.
You can book individually or in tables of up to 10
Click this link here(link is external) to go to the booking page.