Putting Women First

As scheduled, today brought an announcement of which books and authors have won the 2020 Davitt Awards, organized annually by Sisters in Crime Australia (SinCA) and meant to “provide some much-needed—and overdue—recognition for Australian women crime writers.” There are five main categories of contenders.

Best Adult Crime Novel:
The Trespassers, by Meg Mundell (University of Queensland Press)

Also nominated: Bruny, by Heather Rose (Allen & Unwin); Eight Lives, by Susan Hurley (Affirm Press); Life Before, by Carmel Reilly (Allen & Unwin); Present Tense, by Natalie Conyer (Clan Destine Press); The Scholar, by Dervla McTiernan (HarperCollins Australia); and Six Minutes, by Petronella McGovern (Allen & Unwin)

Best Young Adult Crime Novel:
Four Dead Queens, by Astrid Scholte (Allen & Unwin)

Also nominated: All That Impossible Space, by Anna Morgan
(Lothian Children’s Books); and When the Ground Is Hard, by Malla Nunn (Allen & Unwin)

Best Children’s Crime Novel:
The Girl in the Mirror, by Jenny Blackford (Eagle)

Also nominated: The Girl, the Dog and the Writer in Lucerne, by Katrina Nannestad (ABC); Jinxed!: The Curious Curse of Cora Bell, by Rebecca McRitchie (HarperCollins Australia); and Sherlock Bones and the Natural History Mystery, by Renée Treml (Allen & Unwin)

Best Non-fiction Crime Book:
Banking Bad: Whistleblowers. Corporate Cover-ups. One Journalist’s Fight for the Truth, by Adele Ferguson (ABC)

Also nominated: Fallen: The Inside Story of the Secret Trial and Conviction of Cardinal George Pell, by Lucie Morris-Marr (Allen & Unwin); Fixed It: Violence and the Representation of Women in the Media, by Jane Gilmore (Viking); Troll Hunting: Inside the World of Online Hate and Its Human Fallout, by Ginger Gorman (Hardie Grant); and See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Abuse, by Jess Hill (Black), which received a “highly commended certificate” from SinCA.

Best Debut Crime Book:
Eight Lives, by Susan Hurley (Affirm Press)

Also nominated: Banking Bad: Whistleblowers. Corporate Cover-ups. One Journalist’s Fight for the Truth, by Adele Ferguson (ABC); The Bee and the Orange Tree, by Melissa Ashley (Affirm Press); The Drover’s Wife, by Leah Purcell (Hamish Hamilton); Four Dead Queens, by Astrid Scholte (Allen & Unwin); Life Before, by Carmel Reilly (Allen & Unwin); Present Tense, by Natalie Conyer (Clan Destine Press); Six Minutes, by Petronella McGovern (Allen & Unwin); and Troll Hunting: Inside the World of Online Hate and Its Human Fallout, by Ginger Gorman (Hardie Grant)

In addition, reports a SinCA news release, “Emma Viskic … for Darkness for Light (Echo Publishing) and Dervla McTiernan … for The Scholar (HarperCollins Publishers Australia), [are] joint winners of the Readers’ Choice Award, as judged by the 500+ members of Sisters in Crime. Both are serial offenders when it comes to the Davitt Awards. Viskic has won an unprecedented five Davitt Awards for the previous two books in her Caleb Zelic series.” The organization’s Facebook page points out further that “This is the first time in the history of the Davitts that there has been a joint winner.”

These prizes are named in honor of Ellen Davitt (1812-1879), Australia’s first crime novelist. Melbourne’s Swinburne University of Technology sponsored this 20th presentation of the Davitts.

Congratulations to all of this year’s nominees!