Stephen Romei in conversation with Fiona McFarlane & Jock Serong

Jock Serong (2021 ARA Historical Prize winner) and Fiona McFarlane scrutinise previously authorised versions of colonial history through examining the intense interaction between First Nations and settlers within small communities. Stephen Romei explores why these authors chose such settings, the challenges of writing intricate themes, and why these Australian books resonated with judges who shortlisted both novels in the international Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction this year.

All plenary sessions, interviews and panels are included in your weekend conference ticket. There’s no need to reserve a seat in individual sessions.

About Jock Serong

Jock Serong is a novelist and the founding editor of Great Ocean Quarterly. He writes for screen and in national media such as The Guardian and The Monthly, and is a Board member of Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre. His latest novel is The Settlement, which concludes his Furneaux trilogy of novels about the arrival of Europeans in Bass Strait. The second book in the trilogy, The Burning Island, won the 2021 ARA Historical Novel Prize.

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About Fiona McFarlane

Fiona McFarlane’s first novel, The Night Guest, won several prizes including the Voss Literary Prize and a New South Wales Premier’s Award. It was also shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, Miles Franklin Literary Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction, among others. She is also the author of a short-story collection, The High Places, which won the International Dylan Thomas Prize. Her second novel, The Sun Walks Down, was shortlisted for the 2023 Walter Scott Historical Fiction Prize. McFarlane grew up in Sydney, Australia and now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.

About Stephen Romei

Writer and critic.

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