HNSA (Historical Novel Society Australasia) 2021 Virtual Conference
Early Bird Registration is open for the @historicalnovelsocietyaustralasia HNSA 2021 Virtual Conference in October.
With the Conference being hosted virtually for the very first time, HNSA has created its most extensive conference program to date featuring Guest of Honour, Geraldine Brooks.
Join HNSA over two weekends in 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.
The Bootcamp and Publishing Program runs from Weekend One Saturday 16 to Sunday 17 October 2021
and then the Main Conference Program in Weekend Two is a feast of author events and panels,
running from Friday 22nd October to Sunday 24th October.
There is also a suite of 17 optional craft workshops from which to choose.
These can be purchased independently without registering for the full conference.
You can buy tickets for single events but Early Bird registration for the Main Conference Program costs $135 (a saving of $40) and it gives you access to everything including access on demand to the interviews and panels in the Main Conference Program for 3 months after the conclusion of the event.
This is a huge bonus, because it’s really hard to choose between some sessions and (yessss!) this means you can ‘attend’ them all.
(Plus, there’s a session that conflicts with ‘date night’ chez moi... Saturday nights is when The Chef a.k.a. The Spouse makes cocktails and cooks a special dinner, so I’ll be watching that session some time later.)
The Keynote Speech is on a topic dear to my heart. Julie Janson, a Burruberongal woman of the Darug Aboriginal Nation, will be discussing Recovery – Restoring, Reconciling and Re-imagining Lost Histories. (I reviewed Janson’s novel Benevolence during 2020 Indigenous Literature Week here.)
Click here to check out the program and book now.
Many of the 70 participating authors have been featured here on the ANZ LitLovers blog. They include Elizabeth Storrs, Natasha Lester, Malla Nunn, Sienna Brown, Steven Conte, Nigel Featherstone, Robyn Cadwallader, Mirandi Riwoe, Emma Ashmere, Pip Williams, Steven Carroll, Rosalie Ham, Jock Serong, KM Kruimink and guest-of-honour Geraldine Brooks, plus Kiwis Catherine Chidgey and Paula Morris.
As we all know, the pandemic has messed up many a conference, author event, and book launch
and our literary community has had shamefully little support from the federal government.
The HNSA has taken a realistic approach to planning this conference by offering it as a virtual event, and it deserves the support of the literary community.
I hope that many readers will support this HNSA initiative by buying tickets so that the model is viable.
After all, if we want LitFests to sustain us during Lockdown, then we need to support the organisations that offer them.
ANZ LitLovers LitBlog 
This sounds like a brilliant festival. It’s wonderful that the historical novel is regaining importance in literature. It was my favourite genre for many years as I had left school at 15years and it helped continue my education.
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By: Fay Kennedy on August 31, 2021
at 4:15 pm
Yes, I think we can learn a lot from historical fiction, not the bodice-ripping kind, but from the kind of authors I’ve listed above.
And whatever age we left school, all of us have gaps in our education that historical fiction can fill. I’m thinking of the historical fiction that I’ve read from Africa and from the Soviet Union, for example.
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By: Lisa Hill on August 31, 2021
at 5:03 pm