The Anthony Awards. The Edgars. Grand Master awards. In today’s episode, Brook and Sarah discuss different mystery awards and whether readers pay attention to them.
Discussed and mentioned
Agatha Awards (presented at Malice Domestic)
Anthony Awards (presented at Bouchercon)
Lefty Awards (presented at Left Coast Crime)
Silver Falchion Awards (presented at Killer Nashville)
McCavity Awards (presented by Mystery Readers International)
Barry Awards (presented by Deadly Pleasures)
Crime Fiction Lover Awards (presented by Crime Fiction Lover)
Ned Kelly Awards (presented by Australian Crime Writers Association)
International Thriller Awards (presented at ThillerFest)
Shamus Awards (presented by Private Eye Writers of America)
Awards of Excellence (presented by the Canadian Crime Writers Association)
Please Join Us (2023) Catherine McKenzie
The Drowning Woman (2023) Robyn Harding
Edgar Awards (presented by the Mystery Writers of America)
For more information
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Transcript
This transcript is generated by a computer and there may be some mis-spellings and strange punctuation. We try to catch these before posting, but some things slip through.
| Sarah | Welcome to Clued in Mystery. I’m Sarah. |
| Brook | And I’m Brook, and we both love mystery. |
| Sarah | Hi Brook. |
| Brook | Hi Sarah, it’s awards season in the mystery world. |
| Sarah | It sure is. And there are so many awards that celebrate mystery and crime writing. Some have very specific criteria and others are open to a broader submission list. So let’s slide into our glamorous attire and talk about some of those awards. |
| Brook | Oh, that sounds fun. I haven’t had a reason to wear a fancy dress in a long time, Sarah. |
| Sarah | Well, I think I might put on some, well, I don’t have a lot of fancy jewelry, but I’ll put on some nice earrings. |
| Brook | Sounds great. |
| Sarah | So when I look at the different types of awards, there’s awards that are presented and selected at conferences. There’s awards that are selected by various writers associations. |
| Sarah | And then there’s also awards that are selected or presented by different publications that celebrate the mystery genre. And so, I thought we could talk a little bit about each of those, you know, some of the um different awards in each of those different categories. |
| Sarah | So, starting with the conference awards, ah there’s a few that I wanted to mention. You may be familiar with the Agatha Awards, which celebrate traditional mystery books that are published in the United States. And those are presented by Malice Domestic, which is a conference that takes place annually in Maryland, which is just outside of Washington, DC. And, um, as I mentioned, these awards celebrate what we would consider to be traditional mystery books. So nothing too thrilling, nothing too gory, uh, just good old mystery. |
| Sarah | Another conference award Anthony Awards are presented at Bouchercon. And Bouchercon is a conference that moves around ah this year in 2025 it’s going to be in New Orleans, and that’s in September. And it looks like the conference kind of as it moves around yeah the continent, it also moves. Sometimes it’s in August, September. It’ll be in October in 2026. |
| Sarah | And these awards are presented, the Anthony Awards are presented at the conference and the winners are selected by the attendees at the conference. And it’s a similar setup for the Lefty Awards, which are presented at Left Coast Crime, which is another conference that moves around each year and is typically on the western half of North America. I know it’s happened here in Canada, it’s happened in the States. I think this year it’s in Denver. And so that’s that, as I mentioned, is is selected by attendees at the conference. |
| Sarah | And then finally, the Silver Falchion Award is presented at Killer Nashville, which is another conference. This one is held in August, as the name implies, always in Nashville. And ah this award is selected by a panel of of jurors, so not selected by the conference attendees. |
| Brook | I just want to say that I’m really glad that you’re breaking these down like this because I think as a reader for years, I’ve heard these names, but I don’t necessarily know you know, which organization gives which prize and what they’re for and everything. So I, I’m really enjoying this. This is some a topic I really haven’t known that much about. um I ah especially like the idea of the conference attendees being the ones to choose the winner because I feel like that’s, it feels like a jury of your peers, right? |
| Sarah | Mm hmm. Yeah, I like that idea, too, um that, you know, and I don’t know how it works if in advance of going to the conference, you’re kind of told who the different um shortlisted titles are. And, you know, you then have an opportunity to read them or, you know, I don’t know what that what that judging process is. But I do like that idea that um you go to the event and and make the selection there. |
| Sarah | So the next set of awards that I’ll talk about are the readers’ association or readers like the mystery publication awards. And um there are several, but I’ll just highlight a few. um So the McCavity Awards are awarded by Mystery Readers International members. And Mystery Readers International is the largest mystery fan organization in the world. And they have a um publication that I think is issued quarterly. |
| Sarah | The Barry Awards are selected by members of Deadly Pleasures, which ah is an online publication that celebrates miss the mystery genre. And then ah Crime Fiction Lover Awards are selected by readers of Crime Fiction Lover. It’s a online um awards online selection process, but there’s also ah selections that are made by editors of the publication. So for each of the categories, they have the reader choice and the editor choice versions. |
| Sarah | And then one of our favorite publications, Crime Reads has, um, “best of” lists that they publish. So it’s not a formal awards program, but I thought it was worth mentioning because that’s another source for readers to know find what are some of the best, the best books of the year. |
| Sarah | And then finally, the Writers Association Awards. And some of these are the big awards that almost everybody would be familiar with, um like the Daggers, the Edgar Awards. So the um Australian Crime Writers Association, their awards are called the Ned Kelly Awards. And so Ned Kelly was an Australian outlaw. And they have a ah selection of awards under that name. |
| Sarah | The International Thriller Writers have the thriller awards that actually I believe are announced at um Thriller Fest, the conference that’s associated with that. So it’s kind of a hybrid of what I was mentioning before the conference awards and and Writers Association awards. |
| Sarah | And Private Eye Writers of America, this was a new organization for me I hadn’t come across before, but they celebrate um private eye sleuths or um private detective sleuths, so someone who’s not employed by a a government police agency. And they have the Shamus Awards. |
| Sarah | Then we have the Crime Writers of Canada who celebrate Canadian crime writing. So almost all of the award categories are for people who either are Canadian or reside in Canada. And I just want to mention a couple of things about these awards. So, they are now called the um Crime Writing Awards of Excellence. |
| Sarah | But until relatively recently, they were called the Arthur Ellis Awards, and Arthur Ellis was the name that was given to the person who had the role of hangman in Canada. But because of the associations with hanging, the decision was to change the name to the um Awards of Excellence. |
| Sarah | ah The other thing I wanted to mention about these awards is several of the books and authors that we’ve spoken about have been recognized by the Crime Writers of Canada. So the most recent What Would You Do book that we have discussed, Please Join Us, was nominated for the best crime novel in 2023. And The Drowning Woman, which was one of our What Would You Do books in an earlier season, was nominated for the same award, the best crime novel in 2024. |
| Sarah | Vicky Delany has won several awards, and she was one of our first guests on Clued In Mystery. And in 2024, she was actually nominated for two books in the Best Traditional Mystery category. And Daniel Kalla, who was one of our guests last year, was nominated um for one of his books. And I don’t have it in front of me right now, but um and that was in 2022. |
| Sarah | So um just a little shout out to our our authors and books that we’ve that we’ve talked about. The Crime Writers Association recognizes British authors and presents the dagger awards annually. |
| Sarah | And the Mystery Writers of America presents the Edgar Awards. And the Crime Writers of Canada, Crime Writers Association, and Mystery Writers of America also recognize people who’ve made significant contributions to the crime genre and present them with Grand Master Awards. And I think for all three of the um organizations, that’s what the title is, is the Grand Master. |
| Sarah | And that is how Brook, you and I have been selecting our modern greats to profile that series of episodes. um And there are so many amazing authors for us to choose from. |
| Sarah | I mean, we could just do seasons and seasons of episodes if we were just going to go through those lists. um so and And I think maybe that’s worth mentioning that we do turn to the awards lists to select some of the topics for our um for our episodes. |
| Brook | Yes, absolutely. And definitely, as you mentioned, the authors. like But I will say that by and large, I don’t necessarily look at awards lists to choose books that I read. What about you? How do you feel about choosing titles to read just you know for pleasure? |
| Sarah | Yeah, i I think I agree. it’s I always look to see who’s been recognized, but um it’s not necessarily where I go you know when I’m saying, okay, |
| Sarah | For some reason, I don’t have any other books on my TBR list. |
| Sarah | Where am I going to find my next read? I don’t turn to the to the awards lists, but that said, there are some fantastic titles that are recognized. |
| Brook | Right. And you know that these books have been vetted by other very, um you know, serious mystery fans. So I think that typically it’s going to be a great place, any of these, whether it’s a conference award or, um you know, a writer award, whatever, that it’s, they’re probably going to be really great picks. |
| Sarah | And I should give some credit to the website “Stop, You’re Killing Me” um for some of the information that I just shared about these awards. ah That website Stop, You’re Killing Me is a great index of mysteries if you’re looking for a specific type of mystery, say set in a specific location or you wanted to read you know a mystery featuring a coffee shop, they’ve got they’ve they’ve itemized ah several mysteries that way. So if you weren’t going to be looking at an awards list for your next read, then you know that website is ah is a great source. |
| Brook | I was looking into, you know, what it does for an author’s career if they were to win one of these awards. Certainly there’s different, you know, if if you become a grand master, you’ve already have quite a career, right? But, you know, let’s let’s just say one of the conference awards and the agreement was mostly that, yes, it really might punch up the sales of that book but more than anything it’s sort of um publicity and like almost brand recognition and mostly helps for like future contracts in traditional publishing, um maybe kind of gets your your traction for future book sales, but overall might not do a lot. It’s just one thing in building a career. It’s it’s not that somebody wins one of these awards and is suddenly boosted into, you know, fame and fortune. |
| Sarah | When I look at authors who say haven’t been recognized at awards, there are several who I think have written fabulous books and you know for whatever reason, either they haven’t been submitted as potential contenders for the awards or the um you know selection committee just hasn’t um hasn’t agreed with me in terms of how you know fabulous I think the books are. So um people can have a very successful career without ever being recognized um in these ah by these awards. |
| Brook | Oh, yeah, that’s a great point, Sarah. |
| Brook | For some of the larger awards, you know you mentioned that at the conferences, sometimes the attendees are the judges. ah You and I have been invited. we We’ve done some reading for, um it was a conference award, and that was really fun. But I looked at what it takes to be a judge for some of the more prestigious um readers awards or writers awards. And um it was interesting that a lot of them don’t have an actual application. ah You are chosen for your expertise in the mystery fiction field. ah This was specifically about the Edgars, I should say. um And |
| Brook | You know, it I guess it begs the question of, is there some hand picking? Is there a little bit of a click? um It’s just interesting to think about that there are probably some controversies behind some of these awards as well, as we see in what, the Oscars, the Emmys, the music awards. |
| Sarah | Mm hmm. Yeah. |
| Brook | I don’t think that mystery fiction awards are probably immune from that. |
| Sarah | I agree. I’m sure there’s controversy that we never hear about. um But yeah, they’re probably not immune to that. um ah Same thing that that we see you with because the Academy Awards are much higher profile, we hear about that. |
| Brook | So i I found it interesting that you can win a Dagger or a Ned Kelly award with a self-published book, but the Edgars still ah only consider traditionally published books. And I wonder if there’ll ever be a time that that that that changes or if kind of that stigma against self-published books will remain for for a while longer. |
| Sarah | I imagine that it will eventually shift for the Edgars as well. I think um some of the other awards programs have recently made that change. I read recently of, uh, some traditionally published authors whose contracts had been canceled. And if I was one of them, I would be looking at just doing it myself and publishing independently. Um, You know, I think they will probably do quite well because they already have a following and and a readership. |
| Brook | Yeah, the industry has changed so much over the past five to ten years and that is the case with having some of the um authors who have previously been traditionally published entering into independent publishing. That’s going to change the landscape even more. |
| Sarah | Agreed. |
| Brook | Okay. Well, Sarah, thank you so much for sharing this. As I said at the top, this is a This is a topic that I have not known a lot about. And so it really is helpful to kind of categorize the awards this way and learn more about them. |
| Sarah | This has been lots of fun to to learn about. I didn’t I also didn’t know much about this until I started researching for today’s episode. |
| Brook | And listeners, we hope that you gained a little bit more knowledge about the mystery space today as well. And you know let us know, are awards something that you look at when you’re choosing your next read? with We’d love to know. But for today, thank you for listening to Clued In Mystery. I’m Brook. |
| Sarah | And I’m Sarah, and we both love mystery. |
