About

Alyssa Mackay is a fiction writer and freelance community journalist based in Brisbane.

She won the 2020 Thunderbolt Prize Emerging Authors Award for her non-fiction story, Monster in the Dark: The Murder of Betty Thomson Shanks.

In 2025, she won the Cross Genre Award in the 32nd Scarlet Stiletto Awards. She was also shortlisted for Sisters in Crime’s 31st Scarlet Stiletto Awards in 2024 and Sisters in Crime’s 30th Scarlet Stiletto Awards in 2023.

She was the runner-up in the 2025 SD Harvey Short Crime Story Award.

Her full-length mystery novel was shortlisted for the Flash 500 Novel Opening Chapter & Synopsis Competition in 2016 and 2018.

Alyssa’s short stories have been published in Stringybark Stories Tales with a Twist , The Twisted Stringybark Short Story Award, as well as Lighthouse – An Anthology and Forbidden Doors – An Anthology, both published by Lorikeet Ink.

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