We think of home as safe. But danger lurks in a garden of poisonous plants, a sharp kitchen knife, or a rickety staircase.
Three panelists will describe influences, research, and planning that went into their stories in Sisters in Crime Canada West’s 2026 anthology, Crime Wave 4: Home Sweet Homicide.
Location: Room C225, UBC Robson Square
Type: Workshop
Sponsored by: Word Vancouver · Sisters in Crime — Canada West
Facilitators: Merrilee Robson, “A Wake of Vultures” in A Dark and Stormy Holiday (Camden Press) | Winona Kent, Four Short Sets With Jason Davey (Winona Kent · Blue Devil Books) | Craig H. Bowlsby, Requiem for a Lotus (Knights of Winter Press · Granville Island Publishing)
About The Facilitators
Merrilee Robson
Merrilee Robson Vancouver writer Merrilee Robson has published over 40 short stories in Canada, the UK, and the USA, appearing in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, The People’s Friend, and various anthologies. Her novel, Murder is Uncooperative, is a mystery set in a non-profit housing cooperative in Vancouver. She is an executive committee member of Sisters in Crime – Canada West, chairing the anthology committee. Active in Crime Writers of Canada. She has previously served on the board and is currently a member of the awards committee. www.merrileerobson.ca
Winona Kent
Winona Kent was born in London, England. She immigrated to Canada with her parents at age three, and grew up in Regina,Saskatchewan, where she received her BA in English from the University of Regina. After settling in Vancouver, she graduated from UBC with an MFA in Creative Writing, and a Diploma in Writing for Screen and TV from Vancouver Film School. Winona writes mysteries featuring professional musician and accidental sleuth Jason Davey. Her stories combine music, humour, and intrigue as Jason repeatedly finds himself drawn into problems he never intended to solve. There are currently five Jason Davey novels, and an anthology, Four Short Sets with Jason Davey, which will be published in July 2026. Her work has appeared in several crime fiction anthologies, including the Crime Wave series published by Sisters in Crime–Canada West. One of those entries, Salty Dog Blues was nominated as a finalist for Best Crime Novella in the Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence. A Past Chair of Crime Writers of Canada, Winona lives in New Westminster, BC with her husband and a concerning number of disobedient houseplants, many of which were rescued from her building’s compost bin after being abandoned by previous owners. To learn more about Jason Davey and upcoming books, visit www.winonakent.com
Craig H. Bowlsby
Craig H. Bowlsby, Bfa, lives and writes in Vancouver B.C. Craig’s historical mystery novel “Requiem for a Lotus,” won the 2024 Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence for best unpublished manuscript, and it won the Historical Fiction Company’s annual award for Best Mystery Novel (Christie Mystery) for unpublished or published novels in 2024/2025. It was also a finalist (top 10) in the 2023 Killer Nashville Claymore Awards for unpublished mystery novels; it reached the shortlist for the 2022 Clue Book Awards, (Chanticleer International) in 2023; and was longlisted for the Plaza Literary Prize in 2024. Most recently it was shortlisted for the Historical Novel Society’s 2026 First Chapters competition, in Historical Crime. In 2023, Craig won the Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence for his near-future detective short story, “The Girl Who Was Only Three Quarters Dead,” previously published in Mystery Magazine in April 2022, and scheduled to be reprinted in MetaStellar magazine’s fifth annual Best of MetaStellar print anthology in 2026. Craig’s short story, “A Bullet for the Tin Man,” is scheduled to be published in the 2026 Sisters in Crime anthology, “Home Sweet Homicide.”
