Ned Kelly 2015 winners announced

The Australian Crime Writers Association (ACWA) presented the winners of this year’s Ned Kelly Awards for crime writing at a Melbourne Writers Festival (MWF) event on Saturday 22 August.

Candice Fox won the fiction award for her second novel Eden (Bantam), which follows two damaged cops Frank Bennett and Eden Archer, described by judges as ‘socially remote and emotionally wrought’ as they ‘sometimes exceed the law in order to achieve justice’. Fox’s first novel, which also features Bennett and Archer, won the 2014 Ned Kelly award for best first fiction.

The true crime award went to Helen Garner’s This House of Grief (Text), which judges described as a compelling book in which Garner’s ‘observations about human nature, family, love and hate are always profound’.

Jock Serong won the best first fiction award for his novel Quota (Text). Judges said Serong is ‘a serious class act’ and that the books characters, setting and plot made for ‘compelling reading’.

The S D Harvey Short Story award went to Andrea Gillum’s ‘Short Term People’. As previously reported by Books+Publishing, Kill Your Darlings will publish the winner of the S D Harvey Short Story Award in its spring issue to mark the 20-year anniversary of ACWA.

To view the shortlists for the awards, click here. For more information about ACWA, click here.