The Crime Writers’ Association

CWA Daggers Longlists announced for 2022

The 2022 longlists for the prestigious Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Dagger awards, which honour the very best in the crime-writing genre, have been announced. Created in 1955, the world-famous CWA Daggers are the oldest awards in the genre and...


Librarians Asked to Nominate Authors for CWA Dagger in the Library 2019

Libraries are now voting for the winner of the Dagger in the Library 2019, after Martin Edwards carried off the award in 2018. The CWA’s Dagger in the Library is a prize for a body of work by a crime writer that users of libraries particularly admi...


Criminal Critiques

What are Criminal Critiques? Criminal Critiques is the CWA’s critique service for aspiring crime fiction writers, to help you polish your writing and prepare your manuscript for submission to agents and publishers, or for competitions such as the ...


Debut Dagger Longlist Announcement

Each year, the Crime Writers' Association hosts the Daggers, our crime writing awards, which include the Debut Dagger. The award aims to support, promote, and celebrate crime writers of all kinds—both fiction and non-fiction—and of all ages, abil...


The CWA Remembers David Stuart Davies

The CWA has lost one of its most loyal members in David Stuart Davies, a novelist, editor, and playwright who achieved an international reputation as an expert on Sherlock Holmes. David was born in Huddersfield, the town where he lived for much of...


Dagger for Crime Fiction in Translation

Dagger for Crime Fiction in Translation Sponsored in honour of Dolores Jakubowski. This award is for crime novels (defined by the broadest definition to include thrillers, suspense novels and spy fiction) as long as the book was not originally wr...


Staying Accountable

Even writers don’t feel like writing all of the time. When you’re part-way through your book and the rest of it stretches out ahead of you like an insurmountable task, the temptation to do something else instead can become strong, and if you’ve...


CWA Unveils 2019 Dagger Shortlists

The author behind one of the biggest shows on TV, a world renowned forensic anthropologist and the son of ‘the godfather of tartan noir’ have been shortlisted for the prestigious CWA Dagger awards. The ten Daggers awarded annually by the CWA are ...


The CWA Announces a New Annual Dagger Award for Publishers

The world-famous Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Daggers, which honours the very best in crime writing, has created a new Dagger category for the first time in over a decade. The new prestigious Dagger will be awarded annually to the Best Crime an...


International Literary Properties (ILP) to sponsor the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger 2023

International Literary Properties (ILP), the global company that invests in, acquires, and manages the intellectual property rights to books, plays and other literary works, has announced their sponsorship of the 2023 Crime Writers' Association John ...


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