The CWA Debut Dagger Competition

Past Winners

The Debut Dagger award, for the opening 3,000 words of a proposed crime novel, is sponsored by Orion and administered by the CWA. The 2006 winner was US writer Otis Twelve (the pseudonym of D V Wesselmann) with Imp: Being the Lost Notebooks of Rufus Wilmot Griswold In the Matter of the Death of Edgar Allan Poe. He was presented with his award by Lisa Milton, Managing Director of sponsors Orion, and wins a £500 cash prize plus a night for two at the Waldorf Hilton, London after the prize-giving at the Dagger Awards Dinner held there on 29 June. Diane Janes was highly commended for her entry Moonshadow.

The secrets of the last, missing week of Edgar Allan Poe are revealed by the lost journals of his rival, his friend, his literary executor, his failed assassin, Rufus Wilmot Griswold. Imp is a Gothic-Noir laudanum and absinthe soaked quest through the perversions, violence, and horror of pre-Civil War Baltimore that inverts a literary legend and celebrates the human compulsion to do wrong. Read the opening here.

The 2005 winner was Ruth Dugdall from Felixstowe, Suffolk, for her entry The Woman Before Me. Follow this link to read her winning entry. Ruth, a probation officer, drew on her experience working with violent criminals to produce a terrific entry which the judges described as 'dark, disturbing and authentic'.

Susan Runholt from Saint Paul, Minnesota was very highly commended by the judges for her entertaining young-adult story The Mystery of the Third Lucretia.

The aim of this competition is to discover the crime writers of tomorrow, today. In the eight years of its existence over a dozen shortlisted and winning authors have gained publishing contracts with major Houses, and we hope that Ruth Dugdall and Susan Runholt will continue the trend this year. For full information on entry requirements and the prize package, please look at the Rules and the frequently asked questions.

Previous winners were:

2004   Ellen Grubb
2003   Kirsty Evans
2002   Ilona van Mil
2001   Edward Wright
2000   Simon Levack
1999   Caroline Carver
1998   Joolz Denby