The Mystery Writers of America have revealed the winners of this year’s Edgar Awards. The annual prize is named after beloved writer Edgar Allan Poe, awarded to the best authors in the mystery genre since 1945.

These awards recognize the following categories: novel, first novel, paperback original, fact crime, critical/biographical, short story, juvenile, young adult, play, and TV episode.

Last year’s winners included John Hart, Stefanie Pintoff, and Mary Downing Hahn. Follow the jump to see this year’s winners in a few of the top categories.

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Macmillan has created a new online community for crime fiction and nonfiction readers, CriminalElement.com.

Here’s more from the press release: “At launch there will be excerpts, original fiction and articles by authors Joseph Finder, Steve Hamilton, Rosemary Harris, Charles Ardai, Luis Alberto Urrea and more…CriminalElement.com is ‘publisher neutral,’ meaning that it will include author participation from all publishers and other content creators, and is not exclusive to Macmillan authors.”

Crime writers from any publisher can submit original short stories and pre-release excerpts to senior manager Liz Edelstein. This site will also have a Facebook page and Twitter page.

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The Mystery Writers of America announced the 2011 Edgar nominations this morning. The annual prize is named after Edgar Allan Poe, awarded to the best authors in the mystery genre since 1945.

UPDATE: We’ve created a literary mixtape linking to free samples of all the nominated books. Follow this link to see all the nominees, but we’ve included a few of the top categories below.

BEST NOVEL
Caught by Harlan Coben (Penguin Group USA – Dutton)
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin (HarperCollins – William Morrow)
Faithful Place by Tana French (Penguin Group USA – Viking)
The Queen of Patpong by Timothy Hallinan (HarperCollins – William Morrow)
The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton (Minotaur/Thomas Dunne Books)
I’d Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman (HarperCollins – William Morrow)

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