OUR 2025 CELEBRITY JUDGE:
MWA Grandmaster Ellen Hart
Ellen Hart is the author of over thirty crime novels in two different series. She is a six-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Mystery, a three-time winner of the Minnesota Book Award for Best Popular Fiction, a three-time winner of the Golden Crown Literary Award in several categories, among many other awards. In 2010, Ellen received the GCLS Trailblazer Award for lifetime achievement in the field of lesbian literature. In 2016, she was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. Learn more about Ellen and her work on her website, www.ellenhart.com
About Hugh Holton
Hugh Holton (1947-2001) was a Chicago native and a pioneering Black crime fiction writer. He wrote eight novels featuring Chicago Police Detective Larry Cole, all of which drew on Holton’s experiences as a police officer. Some were traditional thrillers while others blurred genre lines to play with science fiction and fantasy. He wrote monthly columns for Mystery Scene Magazine and was a long-time member of the Mystery Writers of America, Midwest chapter. At the time of his death, Hugh Holton was the highest-ranking active police officer writing novels in the United States. The Hugh Holton Award commemorates his contributions to the Midwestern mystery community.
about the award
Every October, we invite any unpublished writer living within MWA’s Midwest Chapter region to submit the first 25 pages of their novel or short story for consideration for the Hugh Holton Award.
Entries are $15 for MWA members and $25 for non-members. Anyone who participated in the Mystery Mentors program in the same submission year is eligible for a free entry. All submission materials, including payments, must be received by 11:59pm on October 31.
The winner of the member category will receive $500.
The winner of the non-member category will receive a year’s membership to MWA (a $115 value) and $250.
Official rules
Submitting writers must not have any novels commercially published (this includes self-published). Entrants can have published short stories or other short pieces.
Writers must reside in one of the following states: IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, MI, MN, MO, NE, ND, OH, SD, or WI.
Only one entry per writer. Previous Holton grand prize winners are not eligible.
Submissions must follow standard manuscript formatting: 12-pt Times New Roman (or similar) font, 1” margins, double-spaced lines, and 0.5” paragraph indents.
One winner will be selected for each category. Non-member submissions and the preliminary round of member submissions are judged by a committee of published Midwest Chapter members; the finalist member submissions are sent on to a special guest judge, announced annually. The 2024 special guest judge was Mindy Mejia.
HUGH HOLTON AWARD
Congratulations to the winner of the 2025 Hugh Holton award!
2025 Hugh Holton Winner
Congratulations!Hugh Holton Award
TOMFOOLERY by Colleen Newquist
MWA Midwest is pleased to announce the winner of the Hugh Holton award. Congratulations to Colleen Newquist of Three Oaks, Michigan, and her submission, Tomfoolery!
Colleen is a communications consultant working in higher education and with nonprofit organizations after a career as an award-winning newspaper journalist and longtime communications leader at the University of Chicago. Her short story “Pranzo” received the Graham School Fiction Prize and was published in Dark Comedy Hour Review. She also produces Stop and Smell the Butter: A Journal of Appreciative Living, a handwritten and illustrated zine that has been in publication since 2002 and was a finalist for the Utne Independent Press Award. Tomfoolery is her first novel.
We want to thank all participants who submitted their work for consideration. The judges were impressed with the quality of writing and how interesting and different the stories where. We also want to thank our celebrity judge, Ellen Hart, for her thoughtful consideration as well as the other judges who helped with this award.
2024 Hugh Holton Winners
2023 Hugh Holton Winners
2022 Hugh Holton Winners
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THE BONE BRACELET by Margo Novotny
Margo Novotny is the pen name of Elaine Kub, a Chartered Financial Analyst whose nonfiction work centers on the economics of commodity markets. The Bone Bracelet is her first novel, a speculative time-travel mystery with an amateur sleuth investigating the murder of an archaeologist in South Dakota's Black Hills National Forest. It was inspired by thinking about the many possible ways society could have been structured before the agricultural revolution and asking how far back historical fiction needs to go to tell a woman's story without gender-based trauma. (Twitter @MargoNovotny)
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HIDDEN ROOMS by Kate Michaelson
Kate Michaelson grew up in rural Ohio where she simultaneously developed her love of the natural world and a strong desire to live closer to a mall. She has worked as an English teacher, technical writer, and curriculum developer. Her first novel, Hidden Rooms, follows a woman who returns to her Ohio hometown and works to clear her brother of a murder charge while also seeking answers to her own medical mystery.
2021 Hugh Holton Winners
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Keith Mulford
Winning entry: Smuggler's Ridge
Keith Mulford is the author of the yet-to-be-published Oak Cliff Mystery series that follows the exploits of a small-town police chief in rural Wisconsin. His novels are complex mysteries with intricate plots, laced with intriguing technology and touches of humor. Keith got hooked on mysteries when, as a young boy, he picked up an Ellery Queen novel. He’s been an avid mystery reader ever since and is now creating his own challenging whodunits.
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Keith Roysdon
Winning entry: Seven Angels
Keith Roysdon had a 40-year career as a newspaper reporter and editor before taking early retirement. He subsequently failed at retirement and is writing freelance for Indiana newspapers, CrimeReads, and PR clients. He writes fiction, and Seven Angels — about a woman who comes back to her small Tennessee town to find police corruption, crime, opioid addiction and human trafficking — was his first completed novel.
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THE DEEP AND FORGOTTEN LOW by Andy Boyle
Andy Boyle is a Chicago-based writer whose work has been in Esquire, NBC News, the Chicago Tribune and more. A longtime journalist, his work was cited in the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News. His novel, The Deep and Forgotten Low, follows a disgraced former Chicago police detective as he reluctantly heads back to Nebraska to find his missing niece, stumbling into a web of corruption, drugs and politics, all while being hunted by a hitman fueled by revenge.
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THE PRICE YOU PAY by Sara Braas
Working late, Rae Dane witnesses the brutal kidnapping of her boss’s 30-year-old daughter Amanda. Rae thinks the only way to protect her own family is to stay silent against the kidnapper’s harrowing threats. But when the desperate kidnapper grabs Rae’s daughter too, she must fight back or she’ll lose everything that matters to her.