Many congratulations to Joe Eurell, author of ASHLAND, the unpublished crime novel which has won the 2025 CWA Emerging Author Dagger, sponsored by Fiction Feedback.

At a glitzy ceremony at the Grand Connaught Rooms in London on Thursday 3 July, Joe’s thrilling tale of murder and redemption set in the American desert was announced the winner. Judges were James Wills of Watson, Little literary agents, Emma Grundy Haigh formerly of Joffe Books and Avon Books/Harper Collins, and best-selling novelist Leigh Russell.The facilitator is the CWA’s Competitions Coordinator – Fiction Feedback’s editor-in-chief Dea Parkin – so it was apt she was the one who got to make the announcement. Photos below….

Winners announced at the same award ceremony were Anna Mazzola who took home the prestigious KAA Gold Dagger with Book of Secrets; Lou Berney for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger with Dark Ride; the first Japanese winner Akira Otani with The Night of Baba Yaga (translated by Sam Bett) for the Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger sponsored in honour of Dolores Jakubowski; and none other than Richard Osman who carried off the Dagger in the Library. Other Dagger winners were Kate Summerscale, Katy Massey, Lisa Hall, Tracy Sierra,  AJ West and JC Bernthal – full details of all the books with links to buy are featured on the CWA website here. Dea was thrilled to be able to applaud them all, including the marvellous Mick Herron, author of the Slough House series of spy novels televised by Apple TV as Slow Horses, who is the 2025 winner of the Diamond  Dagger for lifetime achievement.

Congratulations to the shortlisted authors, too, in particular those unpublished writers shortlisted for FictionFeedback’s sponsored Emerging Author Dagger: Shannon Chamberlain; Hywel Davies, Loftus Brown, Shannon  Falkson and Catherine Lovering. More about the writers, their aspirations and their novels here.