CWA – Life of Cri.me

Crime fans everywhere can nominate their favourite authors online and the ten authors with the most votes will make up the longlist. The response received last year was staggering, with 1,384 crime fans voting for 636 different authors, highlighting the extraordinary quality and variety in crime writing.

Unlike most other literary prizes, the Dagger in the Library is awarded not for an individual book but for an author’s entire body of work and is one of six highly prized CWA Dagger Awards awarded to crime writers since 1955. This year’s shortlist and winner will decided by a panel of judges including previous winner Sharon Bolton, CWA Director Lucy Santos and a panel of UK librarians.

Anyone nominating an author (or three) via the Dead Good Books website will also be entered into a prize draw to win £200 worth of crime fiction from Penguin Random House.

Nominations close on Monday 14th April and the 2015 winner will be announced at the CWA Awards Dinner on the 30th June.

Yes it’s that time of year again. The Crime Writers Association 2015 Debut Dagger competition opened on the first of the month and runs through until Midnight on January 31st 2015. Not sure what to do with your NaNoWriMo manuscript when you’re done? Well now you’ve got another eight weeks to polish it up, send off your synopsis, and you never know….

For 15 years the CWA has been encouraging new writing with its Debut Dagger competition for unpublished writers. The submissions are judged by a panel of top crime editors and agents, and the short listed entries are sent to publishers and agents.

The Debut Dagger is open to anyone who has not yet had a novel published commercially. All shortlisted entrants will receive a professional assessment of their entries. Winning the Debut Dagger doesn’t guarantee you’ll get published. But it does mean your work will be seen leading agents and top editors, who have signed up over two dozen winners and shortlisted Debut Dagger competitors.

But entering the Debut Dagger is more than just entering a competition. You can also join our community, via the Facebook Group giving you the opportunity to ask questions, share your experiences and helping out your fellow writers.

Entry to the competition costs £25 and submissions can be made here

Manuscripts should be 12pt, double spaced, in an easily readable font such as Times, Arial or Helvetica. They must fall within the prescribed word limits. Manuscripts must not include the author’s name or contact details, only the title of the work which will be allocated a unique CWA reference number.

Full Terms & Conditions of entry can be found here. Good Luck to all of you who enter!