Meet award-winning debutant crime writer Donna Malane in Wellington next week

Those in or near the Wellington area have a chance to meet hometown crime writer and award-winning TV scriptwriter and producer Donna Malane next Monday evening. Malane already had a few awards on her mantelpiece thanks to her involvement in high quality TV productions like Until Proven Innocent, when earlier this year she won the inaugural NZSA Pindar Publishing Prize for the manuscript of her debut adult novel, the crime thriller SURRENDER.

Although SURRENDER (read my review for the New Zealand Herald here) is Malane's first foray into book-based crime fiction, she does have quite a true crime and crime fiction pedigree on the small screen. During her years researching and writing re-enactments for television’s Crimewatch series, Donna had unprecedented access to police files and cases. During that time she formed enduring relationships with police, forensic scientists, lawyers, victims and their families, as well as with the odd (and some not so odd) criminal.

Then, while continuing to write and produce a wide variety of prime-time television dramas and documentaries, Donna continued her interest in and enjoyment of writing crime drama. She wrote for the television police drama series Shark in the Park, the international doco-drama series Indelible Evidence, crime drama series Duggan (for which she won Best Drama Script at the New Zealand Film and Television Awards in 2000) and in 2008 co-wrote and produced the film for television Until Proven Innocent, the story of the wrongful conviction of David Dougherty for the rape and abduction of his 11 year old neighbour. Until Proven Innocent won seven major awards at the 2009 Film and Television Awards, including Best Drama. You can read my review of that telemovie here.

I was fortunate enough to meet Malane at the Auckland launch of SURRENDER in late September. Along with being a very good writer, she's also an interesting person - so I would heartily recommend any readers who are in or near Wellington to head along to the event next Monday evening. It should be a lot of fun.

Meet the winner of the 2010 NZSA-Pindar Publishing Prize

Monday 11 October

at Thistle Inn, 3 Mulgrave St, Thordon

starting 7.30 pm

NZSA members $2

non-members $3

Just a reminder that you can also go into the draw to win your own brand new copy of SURRENDER here. The Crime Watch giveaway is open worldwide, and thanks to the good number of entries already, I will now be giving away multiple copies of the book. So if you haven't entered yet, make sure you head here and get yourself in the draw!