CWA Dagger Awards

Readers and authors alike often wonder how the CWA Dagger nominees and winners are selected. This section of the CWA website should answer some of those questions, as well as giving a comprehensive list of all the winners since the awards were instituted.

Only British publishers can submit entries for the awards, and the submissions must have been published in the English language in the United Kingdom within a defined period of time. The number of awards, as well as their names, has varied over the years. In part this was due to sponsorship: in the mid 1990s the names of four of the Daggers (Gold, Silver, Non Fiction, and Short Story) were expanded to include that of its sponsor, The Macallan, distillers of one of Britain's top whiskies. Between 2006 and 2008 the Gold and International Daggers carried the names of their sponsor, the Duncan Lawrie Private Bank.

Since publishers can submit the same book for all relevant awards, it is theoretically possible for a historical crime thriller by a new author to win the Gold, Creasey, Historical and Steel Daggers.

The majority of this summary was compiled by Adrian Muller, a UK based freelance journalist specialising in crime fiction, and organiser of events including Crimefest. Since 2002 the updating has been continued by Cornwell Internet, the CWA’s webmasters.

Photo of CWA Chair Margaret Murphy with some of the 2009 Dagger winners: © Fiona Davies