Register NOW for the 2025 Edgar® Week Symposium!
You may pay online via the MWA Store – Member Rate or Non-Member Rate.
Here is a printable version of the Symposium Schedule, including a way to print a registration form to send by mail.
Date: Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Location: Marriott Marquis Times Square – Empire Complex – 7th Floor
1535 Broadway (between 45th and 46th Streets)
8:30 – 8:50 AM: Registration
8:55 – 9:00 AM: Welcome – MWA’s Executive Vice President – James L’Etoile
9:00 – 9:50 AM: Can You Juggle? – How to keep multiple storylines straight and carry them through to the end without
dropping a single ball.
Moderator: Lisa Scottoline (2025 MWA National President)
Panelists: Sarah Easter Collins (2025 Best Novel Nominee – Things Don’t Break On Their Own, Farrar Straus and Giroux – MCD)
Sulari Gentill (2025 Mary Higgins Clark Nominee –The Mystery Writer, Sourcebooks – Poisoned Pen Press)
Carol Goodman (2025 Mary Higgins Clark Nominee – Return to Wyldcliffe Heights, HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow Paperbacks)
Isabella Maldonaldo (2025 Best Paperback Original Nominee – A Forgotten Kill, Amazon Publishing – Thomas & Mercer)
Charlotte Vassell (2025 Best Novel Nominee – The In Crowd, Penguin Random House – Doubleday)
10:00 – 10:50 AM: Do You Remember the First Time? – Meet the debut authors joining us at their first Edgars.
Moderator: Terry Shames (Macavity award winner Terry Shames writes the Samuel Craddock series, featuring a small-town Texas police chief, and the new Jessie Madison thriller series)
Panelists: Ash Clifton (2025 Best First Nominee – Twice the Trouble, Crooked Lane Books)
Audrey Lee (2025 Best First Nominee – The Mechanics of Memory, CamCat Books
Kai Lovelace (2025 Robert L. Fish Nominee – “Head Start” – EQMM, Sept-Oct 2024)
Anna Stolley Persky (2025 Robert L. Fish Nominee – “The Jews on Elm Street – EQMM, Sept-Oct 2024)
Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson (2025 Best Paperback Nominee – The Road to Heaven, Dundurn Press)
11:00 – 11:50 AM: In the Mood. Setting the scene and building suspense
Moderator: David Putnam (David Putnam is the bestselling author of the Bruno Johnson series, The Dave Beckett series and The Imogene Taylor series)
Panelists: Michelle Chouinard (2025 Mary Higgins Clark Nominee – The Serial Killer Guide to San Francisco, Minotaur Books).
Nicolás Ferraro (2025 Best Novel Nominee – My Favorite Scar, Soho Press – Soho Crime)
Deb Miller Landau (2025 Best Fact Crime Nominee – A Devil Went Down to Georgia: Race, Power, Privilege and the Murder of Lita McClinton, Pegasus Books – Pegasus Crime)
Ayla Rose (2025 Lilian Jackson Braun Nominee – Murder on Devil’s Pond, Crooked Lane Books)
Steven Sheil (2025 Best Short Story Nominee – “The Art of Cruel Embroidery” AHMM, July-Aug 2024)
Robert Thorogood (2025 Best TV Episode Teleplay Nominee) – “Episode Two” – The Marlow Murder Club, Masterpiece PBS)
12:00 – 1:00 PM: Lunch Break (On Your Own)
1:00 – 1:50 PM: Taking Candy from a Baby. Writing Mysteries for Young People
Moderator: Diana Hansen-Young (Writer, artist, and mom, Diana’s been a member of MWA since the 1979 publication of her first short story in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine)
Panelists: Alexa Donne (2025 Best Young Adult Nominee – The Bitter End, Random House BFYR)
Janet Fox (2025 Best Juvenile Nominee – Mystery of Mystic Mountain, Simon & Schuster BFYR)
Margaret Peterson Haddix (2025 Best Juvenile Nominee – Mysteries of Trash and Treasure: The Stolen Key, HarperCollins – Quill Tree Books)
Maureen Johnson (2025 Best Young Adult Nominee – Death at Morning House, HarperCollins – Harper Teen)
Ginger Reno (2025 Best Juvenile Nominee – Find Her, Holiday House)
Natalie D. Richards (2025 Best Young Adult Nominee – 49 Miles Alone, Sourcebooks – Sourcebooks Fire)
2:00 – 2:50 PM: It Takes Character. From detectives readers will follow anywhere to the narrators who can’t be trusted.
Moderator: Larry Light (MWA National Board of Directors)
Panelists: Robert Jackson Bennett (2025 Best Novel Nominee — The Tainted Cup, Penguin Random House – Random House Worlds/Del Rey)
Liv Constantine (2025 Best Short Story Nominee – “Everywhere You Look,” Amazon Original)
Bonnie Kistler (2025 Best Paperback Original Nominee – Shell Games, HarperCollins – Harper Paperbacks)
Ashley Lawson (2025 Best Critical-Bio Nominee – On Edge: Gender and Genre in the Work of Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, and Leigh Brackett – The Ohio State University Press)
Joanna Schaffhausen (2025 Sue Grafton Nominee – All the Way Gone, Minotaur Books)
Amy Tintera (2025 Best Novel Nominee – Listen for the Lie, Macmillan Publishers – Celadon Books)
3:00 – 3:50 PM: Hitting the Books. Research and borrowing from reality (fiction/nonfiction).
Moderator: Joseph Goodrich (Joseph Goodrich is an Edgar Award-winning dramatist and author who’s been described by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine as “One of the most versatile writers in the mystery field”.)
Panelists: Kimberly Belle (2025 Best Paperback Original Nominee – The Paris Widow, Harlequin Trade Publishing – Park Row Books)
Rhys Bowen (2025 Mary Higgins Clark Nominee – The Rose Arbor, Amazon Publishing – Lake Union)
Frank Figliuzzi (2025 Best Fact Crime Nominee – Long Haul: Hunting the Highway Serial Killers, HarperCollins – Mariner Books)
Katie Tietjen (2025 Mary Higgins Clark Nominee– Death in the Details, Crooked Lane Books)
Michael Wolraich (2025 Best Fact Crime Nominee – The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age, Union Square & Co.)
4:00 – 5:00 PM: From the Writers Desk – interviewed by Oline Cogdill (2013 Raven Award winner)
Our 2025 Grand Masters – Laura Lippman and John Sandford
Cost: $95 members, $125 non-members.
You may pay online via the MWA Store – Member Rate or Non-Member Rate.
Here is a printable version of the Symposium Schedule, including a way to print a registration form to send by mail.
