Murder They Wrote: The Rise and Rise of #YeahNoir

Murder They Wrote: The Rise and Rise of #YeahNoir

By Sarah Forster, Booksellers NZ

Founder Craig Sisterson, judge Yrsa Sigurdardottir
and 2011 and 2015 winner Paul Cleave in Harrogate

The recent rise of independent publishers in New Zealand has seen genre fiction explode. New Zealand crime fiction especially, as the judges of the Ngaio Marsh Crime Fiction Award can attest. Founded in 2010, with  fewer than ten books in the running, the range of entries has grown yearly, and in 2016, twenty-nine books were entered into the  awards, and a new ‘first novel’ category launched. And, of course, the excellent hashtag #YeahNoir was coined on Twitter, by Steph Soper from the NZ Book Council.

The Christchurch Writers & Readers Festival (now WORD) have partnered with the Ngaio Marsh Awards since they were founded by Craig Sisterson. We talked to Sisterson who is now London-based, WORD Festival bookseller Pene Whitty from University Bookshop Canterbury, and Peter Riggs from Page & Blackmore in Nelson, about the strength of Kiwi crime and how it sells.

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