HNSA’s podcast Imagining the Past is back for another series in 2021. In this week’s episode, G.S. Johnston is joined by Steven Conte. Steven speaks about planning and executing The Tolstoy Estate (which was recently longlisted for the ARA Historical Novel Prize), writing ‘behind the enemy lines’, the risks of shaking up a novel’s structure, the Gurya Ghost and the Little Boy Lost.
Steven Conte is the author of two historical novels, The Zookeeper’s War (2007) and The Tolstoy Estate (2020). In 2008, The Zookeeper’s War won the inaugural Prime Minister’s Award for fiction and went on to be published in the UK, Ireland and Spain. In 2021, The Tolstoy Estate was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and will soon be released in the Netherlands, Italy and Germany.
Steven lives in the town of Koroit in southwest Victoria. Currently he divides his time between writing, parenting a child with non-verbal autism and working as a pathology courier.
Steven Conte at HNSA’s 2021 Virtual Conference
Steven is appearing at the HNSA’s virtual 2021 Conference, in the panel Know Thine Enemy: WW2 Novels Written from the Axis Perspective.
Novelists have long drawn inspiration from the history of the western Allied forces in WW2. In recent times, more authors are featuring stories written from the German perspective. In this panel, Linda Funnell will discuss with Steven Conte, Tania Blanchard and Catherine Chidgey the challenges they faced in overcoming the taboos of centering their novels around German or Nazi protagonists, and how they approached researching non English sources.
With the HNSA 2021 Virtual Conference being hosted virtually for the very first time, HNSA has created its most extensive conference program to date. Join us over two weekends between 16 to 24 October to celebrate historical fiction with panels, interviews, workshops, bootcamps and so much more. Recorded sessions will remain accessible to registrants for three months after the event. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date with conference news and announcements about the 2021 ARA Historical Novel Prize.
