The Ned Kelly Awards for Crime Writing

Welcome to the Crime Writers Association of Australia.

The Crime Writers Association of Australia was set up in the mid 1990s to promote and encourage Australian crimewriting through the establishment of the Ned Kelly Awards. The 'annual Neddies' have subsequently become an eagerly anticipated fixture on the Australian literary scene.

As legend has it, the Ned Kelly Awards and the Crime Writers Association of Australia were the brain child of various writers, critics, acedemics and booksellers given to meeting over luncheon in Sydney's Chinatown from time to time.

This was the mid 1990s and the Australian crime writing canon had exploded. Readers were supportive, clamouring for stories that reflected our side of the world and the output from writers established and new, was the most exciting and stimulating development in the popular reading realm since Peter Corris ignited the scene in the early 1980s.

Australia could also boast its own world renowned crime magazine in Mean Streets, conceived and edited by Stuart Coupe and Julie Ogden.

Specialist book stores including Kill City in Melbourne and Peter Milne's enormous crime section in Sydney's Abbeys bookshop launched writers and promoted the scene.

Among those seated at the table hatching the awards were; Stuart Coupe, Peter Milne, Noel King, Marlen Day and John Doyle (apologies to those not mentioned). Once the idea was formulated and the wheels set in motion, the association and the awards took off, becoming an essential fixture in the Australian literary world...