Women’s empathetic interventions in true crime storytelling

True crime’s predominantly female audience is well documented, and research published in the United States characterises true crime podcast fans as ‘female, active, involved’ (Boling and Hull 2018; Vicary and Fraley 2010). After the success of Serial, hundreds of millions of new, ‘predominantly female’ listeners worldwide sought longform nonfiction storytelling that captured or elaborated on their personal interests and expectations, resulting in new configurations in true crime. Yet prior to this rapid, gender-informed expansion in the medium, another shift in formula was underway in Australia’s literary nonfiction scene, where a series of high value nonfiction books authored by women and published as True Crime, were already transforming the genre. Acknowledging the ambivalence of authors whose literary works are categorised as true crime, my research explores the ways that women are impacting its narrative and aesthetic conventions. In this paper, I show that in their complex world views, self-implicating strategies, and their readiness to centre victims and survivors, these Australian literary nonfiction texts foretold the true crime boom. This is a case study of women writers whose empathic interventions demonstrate the possibilities for ethical enactments of true crime.