Welcome to the Crime Writers' Association

This year is the centenary of the birth of our founder, John Creasey and the fifty-fifth year of the Crime Writers’ Association. Creasey’s aim in launching the association was to support professional writers and promote the genre and that still holds good today. We continue to raise the profile of crime writing by providing a forum for all writers and others connected with it, but particularly for those who do not reach the heights of the best seller list.

The annual Dagger Awards acknowledge the best in crime writing and include fiction, books in translation, non-fiction, thrillers, psychological and historical mysteries, first novels, short stories and authors whose work has proven most popular with libraries and readers groups. Aspiring writers can enter the opening chapters and the synopsis of a proposed crime novel into the Debut Dagger. To be short listed does not guarantee publication but it does mean their work will be seen by agents and editors who since its inception have signed up over a dozen winners as well as short listed entrants.

Membership of the CWA is open to anyone who has had one crime novel produced by a bona fide publisher (although there are other acceptable qualifications at the discretion of the committee). It is always worth checking with the membership secretary.

We also support writing and readers groups, workshops, festivals, conferences and other literary events. Authors are always prepared to talk about their craft either singly or in groups. To find out who they are and how you can contact them check on the links in the side bar. Whatever your choice in crime writing: the gritty or the cosy, the police procedure or the private investigator, you will find plenty of authors to fit the bill.

Thank you for visiting our site. To go back to the start, click on the crossed daggers logo at the top left hand corner of any page.

Lesley Horton
Chairman.

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