Killer Women

Killer Women is a group of 15 established, London-based female crime writers co-founded by Melanie McGrath and Louise Millar representing many sub-genres of crime writing from psychological thrillers to procedurals, comic crime, political thrillers and more. 

Individually we are: Jane Casey, Tammy Cohen, Helen Giltrow, Paula Hawkins, Alison Joseph, Erin Kelly, Anya Lipska, Colette McBeth, Melanie McGrath, Kate Medina, Louise Millar, Kate Rhodes, Helen Smith, Louise Voss and Laura Wilson.

Killer Women began as a salon but we have now grown in ambition and scope. We’re still small in number and plan to stay that way for now. By pooling our talent, energy and creativity we plan to use the group to help build on the brilliant work already being done by our publicists and publishers and respond to the ways the relationship between authors and readers is changing.

As individuals we really value the expertise and energy of our respective editors, publicists and publishers and as well as continuing to enthusiastically market our books as individuals, we are looking forward to exploring the ways in which, as a group, we can also broaden our reach to bookshops, festivals, events organisers, libraries, bookgroups, media outlets and bloggers

What they offer

·       Bespoke, ticketed events for festivals, libraries, bookshops and other venues, that deliver more than the usual writer-in-a-room. We will add value and experiential richness to your events. We can curate a Killer Women recommends table or shelf in your bookshop or at your event to complement the event itself. Examples:

• ·       Deadlier than the Male debate: what is the truth about women and violence?
• ·    Interviews between crime writers and top forensic psychiatrists, police officers and other criminal justice professionals
• ·       How to Solve a Real-Life Murder: taking a real life murder case and unpicking the investigation
• ·       Forensics quiz

Killer Women masterclasses and workshops. Between us we have years of experience teaching in universities, festivals and libraries as well as running Arvon and Guardian Masterclasses. We can provide a stand alone course or a masterclass or workshop to run before an event.

Killer Women salons and cocktail parties where readers can socialize with crime writers and sample our unique Killer Women

Resource for media and bloggers providing quotations, features, listicals and book recommendations.

For more information visit our website at www.killerwomen.org or email us at info@killerwomen.org. To keep up to date with Killer Women events please follow us on twitter @killerwomenorg and sign up on our website to our newsletter.

Please note: if you wish to arrange an event or interview with an individual author please contact their publicist in the usual way. Details of individual authors’ publishers and publicists can be found at www.killerwomen.org or on the authors’ and publishers’ own websites.

Crime Fiction at the Beverley Literature Festival

Crime: Fiction v Reality

Join crime writer and former journalist, David Mark, as he discusses the most popular genre in contemporary fiction–crime–in conversation with award winning crime writer, Mari Hannah, Mo Dowdy, former Detective Inspector in the Serious Incident Squad of Northumbria Police and Anya Lipska, whose crime fiction has been described as, ‘A gripping reminder of how crime fiction reveals the world around us’ (Val McDermid). So how different are actual criminal investigations from the crime books we read?

Northumberland-based Mari Hannah has written four novels in the DCI Kate Daniels series. Her debut–The Murder Wall–won the Polari First Book Prize and her second–Settled Blood–won the Northern Writers’ Award. Former journalist, Anya Lipska is a TV producer and author whose books give insights into London’s Polish community. David Mark spent more than 15 years as a journalist, including seven years as a crime reporter with The Yorkshire Post. His first novel, The Dark Winter, was selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club in 2013.

Date: Saturday 4 October 2014

Where: Toll Gavel United Church

                                              Time: 4:30pm to 5:30pm

                                              Cost £6.00

See You Tomorrow-

Described by Jo Nesbo as ‘one of Norway’s finest young writers’, Scandinavian author, Tore

Renberg, joins us to discuss his phenomenally successful, critically acclaimed novel, See You Tomorrow.  Considered by many a literary sensation, it is a story about young couples willing to risk everything.  It’s a feel-good novel about a group of gangsters with a leader in the throes of a midlife crisis.  A crime thriller, a coming-of-age story, an epic drama, a comedy, a romance, a gothic and starkly poetic tale of people making a complete mess of their lives, a vivid portrait of the underbelly of the richest city in the world.  Tore Renberg is a multi-award-winning author, literary critic, and TV host.  His novel, The Man Who Loved Yngve, became a major film and his subsequent novels have sold over 400,000 copies in Norway.  His work has been translated into 19 languages.

Date: Tuesday 7 October 2014

Where: Toll Gavel United Church

Time: 7:00pm to 8:00pm

Cost £6.00

More information about the Festival can be found here.

Win Tickets to the New Blood Panel at Harrogate Crime Festival!

Anya Lipska, has been selected by Val McDermid to appear on her New Blood Panel at this year's Theakstons Crime Festival in Harrogate and to celebrate the occasion, The Friday Project is offering the chance to win a pair of tickets to the event.

To enter the competition, answer the following question:  

What is the name of the fictional Polish private investigator in Anya Lipska's debut novel Where the Devil Can't Go?  

The pair of tickets can be sent anywhere in the UK.  They will allow entry for two people to the New Blood Panel, taking place at The Old Swan Hotel, Harrogate, at 12 noon on Saturday 20 July 2013 - for full details of the panel and other festival events click here http://harrogateinternationalfestivals.com/crime/events/

The prize does not include travel, accommodation or other expenses that the winners incur in attending the festival.  Answers to the competition should be sent to shotscomp@yahoo.co.uk.

Please remember to include your full contact details.

The closing date for the competition is Thursday 8 July 2013.

Anya Lipska and Where The Devil Can't Go

Anya Lipska is a TV Producer and scriptwriter who has worked on a wide variety of programmes ranging from BBC Panorama and Channel 4 Dispatches to documentaries on science, history and the arts.  Where The Devil Can’t Go is her debut novel featuring her two main protagonists Kiszka and Kershaw.  She is currently hard at work on the second book in the series.

I had always assumed I would one day write a book and a few years ago, I decided it would be a crime novel.  However, before I could embark on creating a cast of characters and a twisty turny plot of the sort I enjoy, I needed to find a setting and a subject that interested me.  Then it struck me that London’s Polish community might offer an intriguing and different backdrop for a novel that would be part classic detective murder mystery and part political thriller.  To be strictly accurate, it was my husband who first suggested the idea of a Polish detective living in the East End, but after five years had passed without him writing a word, he generously let me run with it.  Even more importantly, as a Pole himself – who’d, left Poland in the early Eighties when it was still ruled by a Soviet-backed communist regime – he offered a privileged insight to the culture, language and history.

The Poles are the UK’s biggest single group of immigrants.  We interact with them in shops and bars, they work in our homes as builders, au pairs and cleaners, their kids sit alongside our kids at school…but to most of us they remain something of a mystery.

As I began properly to research the book, I decided the old adage ‘write what you know about’ was all wrong.  I think that as long as you do your research thoroughly – and as someone who has worked as a journalist and TV documentary producer for twenty years that was the least of my challenges!  – writing about the unfamiliar is less of a struggle.  Being the outsider allowed me to approach things afresh, as though viewing them through the eyes of a reader.  I did not have to agonise over what people might find interesting about Polish culture and history: I worked on the basis that what grabbed me would probably grab them, too.  My husband’s memories of his upbringing were wildly exotic in comparison to mine: from romantic activities such as picking wild mushrooms, hunting for wild boar and making birch sap wine, to the grim day-to-day reality of Soviet communism – queuing for hours to buy toilet roll and flour, and dared to take part in a pro-democracy demonstration.

The personal details helped me create a back-story for my ‘hero’, the private eye Janusz Kiszka, and its political history gave me my plot.  Kiszka is asked to find a missing 19-year-old waitress by his priest but what looks like a routine missing persons job puts him on collision course with DC Natalie Kershaw, a tough young female detective investigating the murder of another Polish girl.  Janusz soon finds himself embroiled in a sinister conspiracy with its roots in Poland’s Communist era, when he was part of the struggle for democracy.  Returning to his home town of Gdansk, he finally unravels the secret in the cellar of a former secret policeman.

Poland’s extraordinary history also gave me a crucible in which to forge Kiszka’s character.  Half a century of totalitarian rule first by the Nazis and then by Communists, has left a distinctive stamp on the character of the Poles.  Alongside their powerful sense of tradition and a small ‘c’ conservatism, with the Catholic church at its core, lies a visceral distrust of authority and the machinery of state.  Kiszka embodies these contradictions, operating in the shadowlands between criminality and old-fashioned respectability, and prepared to use violence while observing his own, particular moral code.  One reviewer put it well, I thought, when she described him as an ‘anti-authoritarian urban knight’.

While the book clearly isn’t a documentary, I hope readers will take away something of the spirit of the Poles and their culture, their sense of humour, and their extraordinary bravery in fighting for their freedom throughout the twentieth century.  Above all, I hope they think it’s a bloody good read…

More information about Anya Lipska and her work can be found on her website.

Where the Devil Can’t Go is published by The Friday Project 7 February, £7.99.