The Australian Crime Writers Association is dedicated to promoting crime, thriller and mystery writing in Australia and to protecting the interests of all creators of crime and mystery works. But we’re not just here for crime writers, we also aim to provide something for everyone who is devoted to the crime writing genre.

As organisers of the annual Ned Kelly Awards, we celebrate the very best in Australian crime writing. Past winners of our overall Best Crime Fiction award reads like a Who’s Who of Australian crime writing, including Jane Harper, Jon Cleary, Peter Corris, Sulari Gentill, Gabrielle Lord, Peter Temple, Candice Fox, Garry Disher and Adrian McKinty.

We also celebrate new and up-and-coming talent with the Best Debut Crime Fiction award, as well as excellence in true crime writing with the Best True Crime Award. In 2020 we introduced a new award for Best International Crime Fiction (published in Australia).

The Louie Award, introduced in 2021, also recognises and celebrates fast fiction crime writing with it’s challenging 500-word maximum length - designed to encourage a new audience of readers and emerging Australian writers to the crime genre.

To stay in the loop with our latest updates about awards, events and publications, please sign up for our newsletter.

We are also available to participate in writing and reading festivals throughout Australia. Please email us anytime.

Meet Your Committee Members

CHAIR

Karina Kilmore
Karina, grew up in Middle Earth (aka New Zealand) and as a finance journalist has had more than 3 million words published in newspapers, magazines and news websites around the world. She has also written three non-fiction books and debuted her crime fiction, Where the Truth Lies, in 2020. Karina was a former Books Section Editor for Australia’s largest daily newspaper and host of the Murder Monday crime writing video series for Sisters in Crime Australia and is an associate author with the 10,000 member Global Girls Online Book Club. She splits her time between the bustling inner-city suburb of St Kilda in Melbourne and a small seaside town along the wild Great Ocean Road, Apollo Bay.

MEMBERS

David Whish-Wilson
The author of eight novels and three creative non-fiction books, David Whish-Wilson was born in Newcastle, NSW and grew up in Singapore, Victoria, and Western Australia. He spent his late teens and 20s in Europe, Africa, and Asia in a smorgasbord of jobs including barman, actor, petty criminal, exterminator, factory worker, gardener, travel agent, teacher, and drug trial guinea pig. Now an author and creative writing teacher at Curtin University, David lives in Fremantle, Western Australia. His crime novels Line of Sight and True West have been shortlisted for Ned Kelly Awards, and his non-fiction has twice been shortlisted for the Western Australian Premier's Book Awards.

Georgina Heydon
Georgina is a Professor of Forensic Linguistics at RMIT University and an expert in the language of police interviewing and interrogation. She has written academic books on forensic linguistics and given guest lectures at literary festivals and panels for writers who want to know more about forensic linguistic case work for their niche, language-related crime novels. She is an enthusiastic cyclist, especially when there is coffee and cake involved. Her other main hobby is arguing with her partner about whose turn it is to work in their restored W2-class tram. Georgina is committee secretary.

Alan Carter
Alan Carter lives just south of Hobart in Tasmania. As well as swimming in icy cold water for fun, he is the author of five Cato Kwong novels – Prime Cut, Getting Warmer, Bad Seed, Heaven Sent and Crocodile Tears – and the Nick Chester novels Marlborough Man and Doom Creek, set in New Zealand. Prime Cut won a Ned Kelly Award for Best Debut Fiction in 2011 and Marlborough Man won the Ngaio Marsh award for Best Crime Novel in 2018. His novels have been translated into French, German and Spanish.

Tara Mitchell
Growing up in Adelaide, aka ‘Strange Murder Capital of the World’, meant an interest in crime was somewhat inevitable for Tara. Unsure of how to translate this into a legitimate career, she instead qualified as an economist at university … but then decided against boring people to death for a living. After discovering a passion for fermented grapes, the wine trade has taken Tara around the globe, as well as providing a cover for extensive research into international espionage. Not content to just read and write about crime, she is an active promotor of Australian crime writers and loves uncovering their secrets whilst interviewing them for live events and online.

Claire Beyer
Claire has worked in the book and book publishing world for over twenty years and throughout her career has sold books, ordered books, written about books, promoted books, reviewed books and of course, read books. Although Melbourne born and bred she has lived and worked in Italy, America and South Korea and is always dreaming of the next travel destination, pandemics permitting. She is also a photographer (not of crime scenes) and a whisky enthusiast. Claire lives in Victora.

Robert Goodman
Robert is a book reviewer, Ned Kelly Awards judge, immediate past chair of the Australian Crime Writers Association and institutionalised public servant based in Sydney. Robert won a science fiction short story competition very early in his career but has since found reviewing to be a better outlet for his skills. A voracious reader, his more than 850 book reviews can be found on his website: www.pilebythebed.com Robert lives in NSW.

Jacqui Horwood
Jacqui is a librarian, writer and incurable bookworm. She won the Sisters in Crime Scarlet Stiletto Award for short stories in 2003 and the Silver Stiletto Award in 2016. She was also shortlisted for the 2015 and 2016 Ada Cambridge Biography in Prose Awards. Her stories have been published in anthologies and e-zines. In her spare time, Jacqui reads a lot of crime books and actively avoids books about feelings. She likes her crime hard boiled and her eggs sunny side up.

Kate Hamilton
Kate grew up in Canberra with three brothers. Before becoming a writer she was a chief executive, a politician and an advocate for women. She has had a career in higher education and the not-for-profit sector, earning a Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Technology Sydney. However, she has now decided to embrace crime writing full time and works as an author and consults for local government in urban development and skills. Her debut crime novel, An Unholy Alliance, was published in 2021, followed by Acid Reflux in 2023. She is currently writing her third book. Kate lives in Sydney.

Australian Crime Writers Association Membership

If you are a crime writer, reviewer, editor, agent, publisher, a committed crime reader or fan(actic) please become a member of the Australian Crime Writers Association to help promote crime writing and reading in Australia.