Tag Archives: Sisters in Crime

SheKilda and women’s crime writing in Australia

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

It’s when someone asks you to contribute a blog post on the state of female crime writing in Australia from the point of someone watching the industry, that you realise you just don’t read enough.

Not nearly enough.

That said, in my view, female crime writing in this country looks in rude health.

Exhibit A is SheKilda this weekend, the women’s crime writing conference I’ve been asked to write this blog post to coincide with. There’ll be 60 speakers spanning fiction, true crime, young adult, ‘crimance’ and screenwriting. With the exception of the Crime and Justice Festival, there’s nothing else like it.

The 53 books by local female writers entered in the current Davitt awards for female crime writing, is Exhibit B.

It’s when you make statements like these that you come up against claims female crime writers are discriminated in reviewing and awards. Certainly, studies overseas have shown that female writers are vastly underrepresented in the review sections of newspapers. I presume the same is true here.

Awards? Let’s look at the top categories for the last ten years of the Ned Kelly Awards, 2002 – 2011.

The results are fairly split in the category of true crime. Five women have won it (it was tied between two women in 2007) and five men (with the result being tied between two men in 2002).… Read more

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Posted in Australian crime fiction, Crime fiction, Kerry Greenwood, Lindy Cameron, Malla Nunn

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Not another post about the crisis of the publishing industry

Posted on June 6, 2011 by Andrew Nette| 3 Comments

This is not going to be another post about the crisis in the publishing industry.

Well, not quite.

The Emerging Writers’ Festival has been running over the last week in Melbourne.

The events I attended, including the crime genre panel at the Wheeler Centre last Thursday night (more about that later), were great. Good speakers, interesting discussion, a refreshing absence of hipsterdom.

I’ll certainly be marking the week off in my diary next year and trying to attend more events.

Not surprisingly, a central theme of the proceedings was the future of publishing. Much of the discussion focused on whether it was in crisis or not.

Before going any further, it’s important to set the record straight. I love books. I mean the paper kind you can smell and touch and thumb through. I’m not going to be coy about it, I really hope the manuscript of my crime novel set in Cambodia gets to become a book made out of a dead tree.

Hopefully you’ll be able to buy it from a neighbourhood bookstore owned by someone you’re on first name terms with. Shit, I even hope I make some money off it.

I also love newspapers, party politics, Hawaiian shirts and a whole lot of other things that have an uncertain future.… Read more

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Posted in Australian crime fiction, Kerry Greenwood

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