32nd Scarlet Stiletto Awards: Go wild in scarlet

William Angliss Institute, Conference Centre, Building A, 5th Floor, 555 La Trobe Street, Melbourne. Friday 21 November, 6 for 6.30 pm.

Go wild in scarlet.

Award-winning Sydney author, Dinuka McKenzie, will present Sisters in Crime’s 32nd Scarlet Stiletto Awards, after first discussing her life in crime with award-winning author, Amanda Hampson.

This year, 231 short stories have competed for 14 awards, with a $13,100 prize pool. Thirty-one stories by 30 authors have been shortlisted. Each author will receive a framed certificate. The winner of the 1st Prize will also take home ‘The Shoe’– a scarlet stiletto trophy with its steel heel plunged into a perspex mount.

Dinuka McKenzie is the author of the Detective Kate Miles crime series, The Torrent, Taken, and Tipping Point, published in Australia and the UK. She is the winner of the 2020 HarperCollins Australia Banjo Prize. The first novel starts with Kate heavily pregnant and a week away from maternity leave; the second and third show her struggling on multiple fronts but still coming through to solve complex crimes with grace and courage.

Dinuka’s writing has been shortlisted for Sisters in Crime’s Davitt Awards, the Bad Sydney Crime Danger Awards, and longlisted for the Richell Prize. Her short fiction appeared in the 2022 Dark Deeds Down Under Crime and Thriller Anthology. Dinuka lives with her family in Southern Sydney on Dharawal country.

Host Melbourne-based author Amanda Hampson, who has been writing professionally for more than thirty years, is the bestselling author of nine novels, including The Tea Ladie,, The Cryptic Clue, and The Deadly Dispute. A runaway bestseller, The Tea Ladies won the 2024 Danger Awards for Best Crime Fiction and was shortlisted for the 2024 Davitt Awards (Best Adult Crime) and the 2024 Ned Kelly Awards (Best Fiction). The fourth in the series, The Model M**der, is out in April.

Dinuka McKenzie will also launch Scarlet Stiletto: The Seventeenth Cut, an e-book of the 2025 winning stories, published by Clan Destine Press.

Sun Bookshop stall: Sisters in Crime members receive a 10% discount.

The price includes a main course plus dessert. Vegetarian/vegan/gluten-free and other dietary requirements catered for. Drinks at bar prices. Men or ‘brothers-in-law’ welcome. Book individually or in groups of up to 10.

And don’t forget to come in scarlet or sporting at least a splash . . .

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Host or Publisher Sisters in Crime Australia