What Happened to Crime Wave?

We’re coming to the time of year when you might be expecting to hear about Crime Wave, the annual conference for crime writers and aficionados  in Portland, normally held in June. Crime Wave will happen this year, though for reasons you’ll read below, we’ve rescheduled it to Saturday, September 27, 2025 at Mechanic’s Hall in Portland, from 8:30 to 4:30.

What follows is my friend Barbara Ross’s description of how we came to this and other decisions about a new version of Crime Wave.

Not Talking At You, Talking With You

“Over the winter a group of Maine crime writers gathered with the folks from the MWPA. Some had been involved in organizing the Maine Crime Wave for years, others were new to creating the conference. All had participated in the past.

The challenge, as the group saw it, was that the world had changed post-pandemic. So many resources for writers were now available online. What was the value of an in-person conference?

Surprisingly, we all agreed on one thing. We still craved community, the opportunity to share our work, learn from each other, and forge associations and friendships that would grow our careers as writers and feed our souls.

We further agreed that this type of experience doesn’t come from a format of panel, panel, panel, no matter how lively, informative, and even hilarious those panels might be. It comes from talking and sharing. So, we dreamed up a new format for the Crime Wave, one that emphasizes roundtables, hosted by authors and others in our field with helpful experience, but with the content driven by the participants’ questions and reflections. We created our list of table topics with the full-breadth of the New England crime writing community in mind—something for everyone regardless of subgenre, career stage, approach to or experience with publication.

To a day of industry and craft-themed roundtables, we’ve added workshops, a “get to know you” event, a keynote speaker, an interview with this year’s Maine CrimeMaster winner, and finally, a rousing panel in our old tradition.

We’ve moved the conference to the fall in the hopes of avoiding the many conflicts of June in Maine and we’ll hold it in MWPA’s new headquarters at Mechanic’s Hall in Portland—a building particularly well-suited to this different approach to programming.

No matter where you are in your crime writing journey—from thinking about writing, to ready to roll (in whatever form that means), to well-established, we would love to see you there!”

The new and improved Crime Wave will also include an opportunity on the Friday before to visit the Maine Historical Society’s presentation of our fascination with crime, Notorious: Maine Crime in the Public Eye, 1690–1940.

Registration and information about the roundtables and other components will be available in June. Keep an eye on the MWPA web site for details.