It’s time for our annual photo blog about the Dell Mystery Magazines’ cocktail party that immediately precedes each year’s Edgar Allan Poe Awards banquet. I’ll let the photos do most of the talking, with just a few clarifying remarks. Spring is a big season for awards in our field. Not only the Edgars but the Agathas (given at the Malice Domestic Convention in Maryland) and the Derringers  (whose winners were announced on the very day of the Edgars this year) have members of the mystery community in a state of excitement and suspense in late April/early May. Often, I include photos from the Malice Domestic Convention, including its Agatha Award winners, in this annual photo post, but this year, no one from either of the Dell mystery magazines attended that convention, so our pictures reveal only New York’s contribution to the season.

The big day—May 1—started for me with a meeting with author Twist Phelan at the Algonquin Hotel Bar, home of the famous Algonquin Round Table, a coterie of literary figures that included Dorothy Parker—who just happens to have been an early and passionate fan of EQMM! Twist and I were a little too early for drinks, but we did manage to get a photo in front of what the waiter assured us was the round table.

As in several past years, the Dell Mystery Magazines party was just down the block from the Algonquin, at the Library of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, the second oldest library in New York City. This year circumstances prevented our fabulous senior managing editor, Jackie Sherbow, from attending the party, but her hand was in all the preparations and we have her to thank for another glitch-free event.

We had the pleasure of meeting a number of our new authors at the party this year, and that was partly due to a change the Mystery Writers of America made to the Robert L. Fish Award for best short story by a new American author. In all of the previous forty years in which the award was given, a winner was announced well in advance of the Edgar Awards banquet at which the presentation of the award was made, and no nominees were ever named. This year, MWA decided to create some suspense around the award by singling out five nominees, withholding the winner’s name until the banquet. EQMM writers claimed all five nominations, and it turned out that no one wanted to miss the festivities. Even those who live outside of New York made the trip in; you’ll find their photos below. Look for Bill Bassman, Kate Hohl, Sean McCluskey, Meghan Leigh Paulk, and Gabriela Stiteler. Not only were they drawn to the Big Apple, one of this year’s EQMM Readers Award winners, Paul Ryan O’Connor, also a Department of First Stories newcomer—and a nominee for this year’s Derringer Award in the flash-fiction category—made the journey all the way from California.

Of course, there were also many old friends at this year’s gathering. The party began, decades ago, as a venue for presenting the EQMM Readers Awards, and although it has grown into a more general celebration of the awards season, it will always be our purpose to honor the Readers Award winners and present their plaques and scrolls at the event. In addition to Paul Ryan O’Connor, who came in third in this year’s Readers Award voting, we had the pleasure of hosting Richard Helms, a longtime EQMM contributor whose stories for us have won Macavity, Shamus, and Thriller awards. This year he took second place in the Readers Award poll—which drew him out of what he described as J. D. Salinger-like  isolation to reconnect with old friends and acquaintances at our party. And then there is David Dean, who earned our readers’ first-place spot this year, as he has done twice before! Even if you’ve never come to New York during Edgars week, David’s face will be familiar to you if you follow this blog.

Once our party was over, most of our guests made their way to the Marriott Marquis Times Square, where my colleague Linda Landrigan (editor of AHMM) and I hosted two tables for the Edgars. There I had the pleasure of catching up with Rob Osler, EQMM’s nominee for the best short story Edgar and a past Robert L. Fish Award winner. He’s someone to watch, with only two years separating his Fish win and his Edgar nomination—and an award-nominated novel came in between! A final highlight of the evening was seeing Katherine Hall Page (pictured below at the Dell party) receive the MWA’s highest honor, the Grand Master Award.

Thanks to our photographer, Ché Ryback, for capturing so many memorable moments with his camera. And a big thanks too to Kevin Wheeler, who manned the drinks table and helped us in many other ways.

                                                                             —Janet Hutchings