During the online Bloody Scotland festival this past weekend, the winners of the 2020 Bloody Scotland prizes were announced in a virtual ceremony. They included the Debut Prize, won by Deborah Masson for her novel, Hold Your Tongue, while Francine Toon's novel, Pine, won the McIlvanney Prize for the best Scottish Crime book of the year. You can check out all of the shortlisted finalists for both prizes via this link.
HarperCollins Australia has named Dinuka McKenzie the winner of the 2020 Banjo Prize for her "gripping, pacy police procedural," Flood Debris. HarperCollins launched The Banjo Prize in 2018 in a quest to find Australia’s next great storyteller, offering the chance to win a publishing contract with HarperCollins with an advance of $15,000.
The Glass Key award is handed out annually to a crime novel by an author from the Nordic countries. The award, named after the novel The Glass Key by American crime writer Dashiell Hammett, is a real glass key given every year by the members of the Crime Writers of Scandinavia to a crime novel written by a Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, or Swedish author. This year's winner is Swedish writer Camilla Grebe for Skuggjägaren (The Shadow Hunter). This was Grebe’s second Glass Key win following her triumph with the psychological thriller, Diary of My Disappearance. The only two other authors to win the price twice are Stieg Larsson and Arnaldur Indriðason. (HT to The Rap Sheet)
The Library of Congress National Book Festival is going online this year for three days starting Friday, September 27th. You can sign up for free registration to watch the livestreams with Colson Whitehead and John Grisham on Saturday and Walter Mosley and David Ignatius on Sunday, and there are many other authors in various genres joining in, as well.
Banned Books Week, the annual event celebrating the freedom to read, will be held September 27 to October 3 with the theme "Censorship Is a Dead End." The American Libraries Association has created a list of 40 virtual program ideas for Banned Books Week, including story time or Q&A with a banned author, a partnership with a local LGBTQIA+ group to address why LGBTQIA+ stories are overwhelmingly censored, an online bingo based on banned book titles, and a partnership with an organization that centers on Black voices to discuss racism. The ALA's program ideas in part reflect titles on its most challenged books of 2019 where eight of the 10 titles were challenged or banned because of LGBTQIA+ content. (HT to Shelf Awareness)
The in-person Writers' Police Academy conference has offered hands-on training to authors for over ten years, but due to popular demand and the success of the Virtual MurderCon event in August, organizers have put together a new lineup of online courses that everyone can attend. The Writers’ Police Academy Online will officially open its virtual doors on October 24, 2020 with the first daylong seminar called "Mystery and Murder: Transforming Reality into Fantastic Fiction." This first session will be live and interactive, meaning that instructors will deliver their presentations and respond to questions in real time. The all-new website is currently under construction and registration will soon be available soon.
International Thriller Writers is presenting a Virtual Winter Thrills event from January 11 to March 18, 2021. The online, ongoing conference will offer chances to participate in the Master Class, Practice PitchFest, and the brand new Thriller MBA course segments. The classes will be taught by ITW bestselling authors, agents, editors, and marketing professionals, including a critique of your query letter. Check out the lineup and register via the following link.
The Killer Nashville conference is now taking submissions for the 2021 Claymore Award for unpublished manuscripts. Created in 2009, the Killer Nashville Claymore Award assists new and rebranding English-language fiction authors to get published, including possible agent representation, book advances, editor deals, and movie and television sales. Submissions for Killer Nashville's Silver Falchion Awards in various categories for published books opens September 25.
In light of Netflix’s new Sherlock-flanked detective adventure, Enola Holmes, escape room crew Escape Hunt UK has put together a fun little game that takes you across Victorian London on a hunt for the titular heroine, which you can play entirely within your own home. The free game, which somewhat takes cues from the film's narrative, comes in the form of a downloadable PDF, which includes a map, a copy of The London Gazette, and a series of clues and activities to solve on an answer sheet to find Enola somewhere in 1884 London.
The Folio Society is set to publish the first-ever illustrated edition of Mario Puzo’s genre-defining gangster novel, The Godfather, a brilliant and brutal story of Mafia feuds in post-war New York. This new title is lavishly illustrated with atmospheric artwork by Robert Carter and has an introduction by Jonathan Freedland.
Just in case you didn't think books were valuable comes this news item: Stolen books worth £2.5m found under floor of Romanian house. About 200 "irreplaceable" books, including first editions of Galileo and Isaac Newton, were taken by thieves in January 2017 who cut holes in the roof of a warehouse in Feltham then abseiled in, dodging sensors. The men were identified as being part of a Romanian organized crime gang.
The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "Bird Heart Racing" by Amy Holman.
In the Q&A roundup, Lynda La Plante chatted with The Telegraph about nudity, blindness, being barred from the set of her TV show after falling out with the show’s producers, and bringing up a teenager in La Plante's seventies; the Sunday Post spoke with Lee Child prior to his appearance on the last day of the Bloody Scotland crime-writing festival; and Hank Phillippi Ryan was interviewed by Rick Brown of Yard Light Media about her latest novel, First to Lie.
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