Although the Crime Cologne festival won't be held this year, its "Crime Cologne Award 2021" will still be awarded, and the festival recently announced the six finalists whittled down from the original fifteen-book longlist. They include: Orkun Ertener - Was bisher gescha (What Happened So Far); Marcel Huwyler - Frau Morgenstern und der Verrat (Ms. Morgenstern and the Betrayal); Merle Kröger - Die Experten (The Experts); Ben Riffko - Grünes Öl (Green Oil); Joachim B. Schmidt - Kalmann; and Matthias Wittekindt - Vor Gericht (In Court). As Literary Saloon noted, we'll likely see some of these in English translation, certainly Joachim B. Schmidt's Kalmann, which is forthcoming from Bitter Lemon Press.
Bloody Scotland announced the full program for this year's hybrid festival that will give festival goers in Stirling the full-on festival experience while allowing authors and readers who can’t be there in person the opportunity to join in the fun. Running from September 17-19, highlights include Q&As with Kathy Reichs, Karin Slaughter, Lee Child and Stephen King; panels with Val McDermid, Ian Rankin, Denise Mina, Chris Brookmyre, Alan Parks, Mark Billingham, Kia Abdullah and Louise Candlish; Pitch Perfect and Crime in the Spotlight events; a performance by the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers and a cabaret twist on the normal Quiz which will see each quizzer (Val McDermid, Chris Brookmyre, Doug Johnston, Mark Billingham, Luca Veste and Stuart Neville) performing a musical number; a live version of the Red Hot Chili Writers popular crime podcast; an A-Z of Crime starting with Megan Abbott and concluding with Anne Zouroudi; and Around the World in 80 Deaths featuring authors from Argentina, the Sicangu Lakota Nation, Russia, and Nigeria, chaired by Craig Sisterson.
As part of their Sizzling Summer Series, three chapters of Sisters in Crime are presenting a free virtual panel on August 22 that gives you a taste of three authors' different takes on the mystery genre. With moderator Maddie Margarita, the authors will talk about how they write and the differences in their approaches in their latest books. Currently scheduled to appear on the panel are Anthony Award-nominated E.A. Aymar, whose most recent thriller, They're Gone, was published in 2020 under his pseudonym E.A. Barres; Alma Katsu, whose debut spy thriller, Red Widow, is the logical marriage of her love of storytelling with her 30+ year career in intelligence; and Tara Laskowski, whose debut suspense novel, One Night Gone, won the Agatha Award, Macavity Award, and the Anthony Award. For more information and to order books, you can visit co-sponsor Book Carnival's website.
Meanwhile, the national Sisters in Crime organization is also offering a free series of talks for members and the general public on writing crime short stories. In the first of four sessions on the craft of writing short mystery fiction (Wednesday, September 22), Art Taylor walks you through the basics of writing short stories: what is a short story, what is its history, and what you can expect when you read one. He’ll be joined by Steph Cha, editor of The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2021, who will talk to Art about what’s going on in the world of short mystery fiction right now. Also coming up in later months, Plot and Structure with Barb Goffman (January 2022); Prose with E.A. Aymar/E.A. Barres (April 2022); and Endings with Toni L.P. Kelner (July 2022).
The new Arthur Conan Doyle Society (spearheaded by George Mason University's Ross Davies) is devoted to the study and enjoyment of the works of Conan Doyle. It is accepting nominations until November 1, 2021, for the best scholarly writing on Conan Doyle's works or life that was published in 2020–21. (HT to The Bunburyist.) Doylean Honorees receive: An invitation to an event in their honor to be held at The Mysterious Bookshop in NYC during the week of January 10, 2022 (exact date TBD); a $250 Bookshop credit and a lovely certificate; and "a justifiable sense of pleasure and pride for impressing Doyleans of good taste and high integrity."
The next issue of Mystery Readers Journal will focus on Cold Case Mysteries. Editor Janet Rudolph is seeking reviews (50-250 words), articles (250-1,000 words), and Author! Author! essays (500-1,000 words). Author Author! Essays are first person, about yourself, your books, and your unique take on "Cold Case Mysteries." Submissions are due September 15.
One more nasty side effect of COVID: since the start of the pandemic, there’s been a rise in instances of government censorship of books around the world. In October 2020, the International Publishers Association released a 106-page report, "Freedom to Publish: Challenges, Violations and Countries of Concern," that outlined 847 instances of censorship in a host of countries, including France, Iran, Serbia, and the United Kingdom, as well as the United States. According to the report, in 55% of those instances, the censorship was undertaken by government authorities.
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine is celebrating their eightieth anniversary with an EQMM anniversary tradition, a trivia contest. The first reader to e-mail them with the correct answers by October 15 will win a choice of five free EQMM anthologies from the archives. Five runners-up will each receive one anthology.
It's Bulwer-Lytton time again! The contest that celebrates deliberately bad writing is back with this year's winners. There are various categories such as the Crime & Detective division (including the winner, Paul Scheeler, Buffalo, NY), that are definitely worth checking out for a good chuckle.
This latest featured poem at the 5-2 Crime Poem Weekly is "An Open Letter from a Funeral Director to the Anxi-Vaxxers" by Robert Cooperman. And 5-2 editor, Gerald So, is seeking more submissions for the online crime poetry 'zine by August 31st. If you have something you've tucked away in a drawer, dust it off and send it along.
In the Q&A roundup, Criminal Element chatted with Megan Collins, author of The Family Plot, about a family obsessed with true crime who becomes the center of a true crime themselves; and CrimeReads spoke with Aya de Leon, Lauren Wilkinson, and Rosalie Knecht, three authors driving the evolution of feminist espionage fiction.
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