The 2020 McIlvanney Prize shortlist for Scottish Crime Book of the Year was announced yesterday, with the winner to be announced in a virtual event on Friday, September 18th. This year's finalist titles include Whirligig by Andrew James Greig; Pine by Francine Toon; A Dark Matter by Doug Johnstone; and The Art of Dying by Ambrose Parry, the pen name of husband and wife team, Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman. You can read more about the books and the judges' comments via the Bloody Scotland Conference website.
Crime Writers of Canada (CWC) announced the opening of the 2021 Crime Writers of Canada Awards for Excellence in Canadian Crime Writing, formerly known as the Arthur Ellis Awards. This will also be the first year for a new category: The Howard Engel Award, for Best Crime Novel Set in Canada, sponsored by the Engel Family with a $500 prize. The late Howard Engel was one of the founders of Crime Writers of Canada, a prolific author, former CBC producer, and the inaugural recipient of the CWC Grand Master Award. Other award categories and prizes include: $1000 for Best Crime Novel, sponsored by Rakuten Kobo; $500 for The Angela Harrison Memorial Award for Best Crime First Novel, sponsored by CWC member and author Maureen Jennings (Murdoch Mysteries); $200 for Best Crime Novella and $300 for Best Crime Short Story, both sponsored by Mystery Weekly; $500 for Best Juvenile/YA Crime Book sponsored by Shaftesbury Films; $500 for the Best Unpublished Crime Novel manuscript written by an unpublished author sponsored by ECW Press; and Best French Crime Book and Best Nonfiction Crime Book. Winners will be announced at a gala to be held in Toronto in May of 2021. Full details about the competition can be found on the Crime Writers of Canada website.
This 2020 BAD Sydney Crime Festival is going online and splitting into two parts. The International Festival will take place September 10-13 and feature such authors as Ann Cleeves, Don Winslow, Karin Slaughter, Jo Nesbø, Kathy Reichs, Camilla Läckberg, and Nicci French. The second part will be the Face to Face Festival from November 5-8 when the Danger Prize will be awarded for the best book, TV Series, podcast, or film about Sydney crime released in the previous year. (HT to Shots Magazine)
New York Times bestselling author and thriller writer Ruth Ware will be talking about her latest book, One By One, at the National Writers Series in an online live event to be held at 2 p.m. ET on September 13. The NWS is suggesting a donation for events this fall, to help them overcome the loss of ticket revenue from in-person events at the City Opera House. Money collected will be used for their Raising Writers programs, including Front Street Writers, poetry workshops, writing workshops, and Battle of the Books.
In keeping with many events this year, the International Agatha Christie Festival is going online. The free 2020 virtual festival will be live on the festival's new YouTube channel on September 15. To make sure you don’t miss out, you can subscribe now by visiting this link. Sophie Hannah, Laura Thompson, and Mathew Prichard are among the special guests with topics to include Christie’s Childhood; her home, Greenway; Hercule Poirot; and Christie’s plays, Witness for the Prosecution and The Mousetrap, among other subjects.
If you are a poet, short story writer, or novelist who lives in the United States and have not yet been published by a major publisher, the Key West Literary Seminar and Workshop has an Emerging Writers Award to which nominations may be sent until September 15. Here’s the link for all the information you need: full guidelines and a link to the application here. (HT to the Rap Sheet)
Investigation Discovery and James Patterson have partnered once again for a new series of books written by Patterson and inspired by the network’s library of true crime programming. The first of the three books, Murder Thy Neighbor, is set to be published on Tuesday, Sept. 15. According to ID, the book "profiles two twisted tales inspired by true-crime horrors: the first following a neighbors’ quarrel that turns violent and the second, cyber-bullying that explodes in a double murder." That will be followed by Murder of Innocence on November 17, 2020, and Till Murder Do Us Part on January 19, 2021.
The novel by Agatha Christie known to most people by the title And Then There Were None actually started out with a different title taken from a minstrel song. That original title is now considered offensive, which is why it has been changed everywhere—except in France. However, it was just announced that the book will finally be retitled there, in a decision made by Christie's great-grandson James Prichard, who heads the company that owns the literary and media rights to Christie’s works.
The latest crime poem at the 5-2 Weekly is "English Teacher, or an Institutional Nightmare," by Emory D. Jones.
In the Q&A roundup, Emma Cline stopped by The Guardian to discuss Harvey Weinstein, weathering a plagiarism allegation, and her new collection of suspense short stories, Daddy; Dwyer Murphy of CrimeReads chatted with Carl Hiaasen about "Palm Beach, Slithery Characters, and Florida Crime Fiction"; Brad Parks spoke with Deborah Kalb about quantum physics and his latest thriller, Interference; Cuban author Uva de Aragón opened up about her fun, independent, and food-loving female sleuth, María Duquesne; and Denise Mina talked about the fact she couldn't read until she was nine, her current writing projects, and her writing influences.
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