Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society to sponsor non-fiction Dagger

The Crime Writers’ Association has today (NZT) announced the new sponsors for its prestigious Dagger for Non-Fiction. The new sponsors for the annual award are The Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS). ALCS is a membership organisation for writers and seeks to protect and promote the rights of authors writing in all disciplines and ensure they receive fair payment for their work. The Dagger for Non-Fiction is awarded in July each year.

Barbara Hayes, Chief Executive of ALCS, said: “ALCS is delighted to offer its support in sponsoring the prestigious Crime Writers’ Association’s Non-Fiction Dagger. It is part of ALCS’ remit to promote the work of all types of writers and we are delighted to be involved with the Crime Writers’ Association in promoting a genre that has captured the hearts and imaginations of British authors and readers for so long.”

Peter James, CWA Chair, said: “This is terrific news. The ALCS is an important organisation and we are delighted that they will be sponsoring next year’s award. Much is said and written about crime fiction but non-fiction is also important and needs to be recognised. This award has always sought to do that.”

This year’s winner Doug Starr, a writer from Boston in the United States (pictured, photo: Stephen B Soumerai), who won with THE KILLER OF LITTLE SHEPHERDS, published by Simon & Schuster, said: “Winning is an enormous honour, especially coming from an organisation of British writers who represent such a rich and respected tradition in the genre.”

ALCS collects fees on behalf of the whole spectrum of UK writers: novelists, film & TV script writers, poets and playwrights, freelance journalists, translators and adaptors. All writers are eligible to join ALCS.

Set up in 1977 in the wake of the original campaign for Public Lending Right (led by ALCS Honorary President – Maureen Duffy, Brigid Brophy and Lord Ted Willis among others) the Society collects fees that are difficult, time-consuming or legally impossible for writers and their representatives to claim on an individual basis: money that is nonetheless due to them. Fees collected are distributed to writers twice a year in February and August. ALCS currently has over 82,000 Members in the UK and worldwide. It has agreements with over 55 countries worldwide and has paid out over £275 million in its 34 year history. Further details on ALCS can be found at www.alcs.co.uk Contact information: ALCS, The Writers’ House, 13 Haydon Street, London, EC3N 1DB. Tel: 020 7264 5700; email: alcs@alcs.co.uk.

For more information on the CWA or the Dagger awards, please visit the website, http://www.thecwa.co.uk/ or contact media.enquiries@thecwa.co.uk.

Finalists for Irish Crime Novel Award announced

On Thursday night the finalists for the various categories of the Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Award 2010 were announced, including the six finalists for the Ireland AM Crime Fiction Award.

This is the second year that there has been a crime fiction category in the Irish Book Awards, and it's great to see the genre being recognised in this way. Hat tip to Declan Burke of Crime Always Pays re the announcement.

The finalists for the Ireland AM Crime Fiction Award 2010 are:

• City of Lost Girls, Declan Hughes
• Time of Death, Alex Barclay
• Faithful Place, Tana French
• The Missing, Jane Casey
• Dark Times in the City, Gene Kerrigan
• The Twelve, Stuart Neville

You can read more about the awards, and the public vote, here.

Have you read any of the eligible Irish crime novels? Who do you think should win?

Flash Fiction: read the Derringer Award winner

At Bouchercon over the weekend, along with the Macavity, Barry, and Anthony Award announcements, the winners of the annual Derringer Awards of the Short Mystery Fiction Society were revealed.

I love reading full-length crime novels, but I do also really enjoy crime-centred short stories, whether in the form of author collections like Peter Robinson's enjoyable The Price of Love, collections with numerous contributors like the recent The Dark End of the Street: New Stories of Sex and Crime by Today's Top Authors edited by Jonathan Santlofer and S.J. Rozan, or one-off stories in mystery magazines or on the Internet. It's nice to be able to just dip in and quickly finish a good story.

And for those who want to be able to really quickly pick up, read, and finish a good short story, then the Flash Fiction category (Up to 1000wds) might interest you. This year's Derringer winner in that category was "And Here's To You, Mrs Edwardson" by Hamilton Waymire, published in the webzine Big Pulp, November 23, 2009, a story of a pizza boy and an older woman.

The great thing is not only does it only take a couple/few minutes to read, the entire thing is available online, so you can all dive in and sample some award-winning crime fiction, right here.

What do you think of the winning Flash Fiction story? Do you like crime and mystery short stories, as well as novels? If so, what are some of your favourite authors/stories? What makes a good crime fiction short story? Thoughts and comments welcome.

Ellis Peters Award shortlist announced

The Crime Writers’ Association will next month announce the winner of this year’s prestigious Ellis Peters Historical Award. Established for the best historical crime novel (set in any period up to 35 years prior to the year in which the award will be made) by an author of any nationality, the award commemorates the life and work of Ellis Peters (Edith Pargeter) (1913-1995), a prolific author perhaps best known as the creator of Brother Cadfael.

The winners will be announced on November 4 during an event at Little, Brown Book Group, 100 Victoria Embankment, London

The Ellis Peters Historical Award Prize £3,000
Sponsors: The Estate of Ellis Peters, Headline Book Publishing Company and Little, Brown Book Group

Shortlist

Revenger – Rory Clements
Publisher: John Murray
This second novel to feature the Elizabethan ‘intelligencer’ John Shakespeare captures all the danger but also all the excitement of living in capricious times when a wrong word can get you sent to the Tower. An exuberant novel that revels in the sights and smells of Tudor England.

Washington Shadow – Aly Monroe
Publisher: John Murray
This novel shows that your allies can do you as much harm as your enemies as MI6 agent Peter Cotton gets caught up in diplomatic intrigue in Washington. Monroe conjures up a world of murder and double dealing in beautifully lyrical prose.

Heresy – S J Parris
Publisher: HarperCollins
An astonishingly accomplished first outing for Giordano Bruno, monk, poet and sleuth, investigating skulduggery in Elizabethan Oxford. Parris has resurrected an undeservedly forgotten figure and her depiction of a society riven by religious intolerance is timely.

Heartstone – C J Sansom
Publisher: Mantle
Massive, colourful and ambitious, this is a double mystery for Sansom’s wily lawyer Mathew Shardlake. The background of Tudor England - with Henry’s ill-advised foreign wars having modern resonances - is a stunning backdrop.

The Anatomy of Ghosts – Andrew Taylor
Publisher: Michael Joseph, Penguin Books
This is Andrew Taylor at his considerable best; a wonderfully atmospheric - and labyrinthine -- mystery set in a period Cambridge evoked with all the skill that Taylor is famous for.

To Kill A Tsar – Andrew Williams
Publisher: John Murray
Compromised characters with difficult moral choices are at the centre of To Kill a Tsar. Set in a strongly realised nineteenth-century St Petersburg and dealing with the first significant terrorist cell of the modern era, this is bravura storytelling.

For press enquiries or more information on the CWA, please visit the website, www.thecwa.co.uk, or contact media.enquiries@thecwa.co.uk

90-year old Baroness James scoops journalism award

Earlier this year I had the honour and privilege of interviewing, by phone, crime writing living legend Phyllis Dorothy "PD" James, Baroness James of Holland Park, OBE, FRSA, FRSL, in the lead-up to her 90th birthday on 3 August.

I must confess to a few nerves prior to picking up the phone (which is very unlike me - and I've interviewed a range of people, from All Blacks and former Prime Ministers, to Super Bowl winning former NFL stars, to the Attorney-General, to authors who've sold tens of millions of novels), but Baroness James was an absolute delight to interview - polite yet opinionated, open and honest, incredibly intelligent, not afraid to talk about all sorts of issues, and absolutely 'as sharp as a tack'.

During our interview we briefly discussed her somewhat famous interview, as guest editor of the Today programme on Radio 4, with with BBC director general Mark Thompson in December last year. Where this 'old granny' completely skewered the head of British public television.

Now news has come through that Baroness James has in fact won the BBC’s Nick Clarke Award for journalism for her interview with Thompson. Reportedly, the Judges praised her for her "polite tone, sharpness and competence". The award is given in memory of Nick Clarke, former presenter of The World at One, who died in 2006.

Baroness James was reported as saying, "The broadcast interview is one of the most effective ways in which the major issues of today’s world can be discussed, and I am greatly honoured to be the recipient of this important prize established in memory of a distinguished broadcaster".

You can access the broadcasts from the day Baroness James was guest editor here.

You can read the 9mm part of my interview with PD James here.