True Crime and Women: Writers, Readers, and Representations

Bringing new research from true crime writers, scholars, and media practitioners around the world, this book offers fresh perspectives on how women read, write, and are portrayed in true crime stories across different platforms, including documentaries, podcasts, and TikToks.

The genre of true crime is flourishing, and it is overwhelmingly consumed by women. Despite this, there is much we do not know about how women consume true crime and are represented in true crime stories of various kinds. This edited volume helps to fill this gap in our knowledge. Across ten chapters and using a variety of study methods, including creative practice, interviews, surveys, archival research, and case studies, the book reveals the multifaceted ways that true crime matters to women and suggests areas of future research. It also offers new insights on a diverse range of topics, such as racial identities, fraudsters, activism, victimisation, and deviance, as well as highlighting major cases from past to present which have influenced criminal justice responses.

True Crime and Women is intended for researchers and students of criminology, literary studies, gender studies, media and journalism studies, and rhetorical studies, as well as media practitioners and writers.

Lili Pâquet is a Senior Lecturer in Writing at the University of New England, Australia with research interests in crime fiction, true crime, and rhetorics. Her research has been published in journals including Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Crime Media Culture, Computers and Composition, New Writing, and Journal of Popular Culture, and her monograph, Crime Fiction from a Professional Eye: Women Writers with Law Enforcement and Justice Experience was published in 2018.

Rosemary ’Rose’ Williamson is Associate Professor in Writing and Head of the Department of Creative Arts and Communication at the University of New England, Australia, and an honorary member of the Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University. She conducts research on Australian magazines and the rhetorical dimensions of magazine feature articles, including those on true crime, in popular women’s magazines. Her research interests also include life writing, environmental rhetoric, and political rhetoric. Her research has been published in New Writing, Journalism Studies, Life Writing, Media Studies, and elsewhere.