HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY AUSTRALASIA CONFERENCE

20 MARCH 2015

OPENING NIGHT RECEPTION

Metcalfe Auditorium, State Library of NSW, Macquarie St, Sydney at 6 – 9 pm

Join us as we officially launch the inaugural HNSA Conference. Meet other attendees as canapés and drinks are served then enjoy our program.

6.00 pm – COCKTAILS

6.30 pm – WELCOME
Welcome Address by Sophie Masson, award winning novelist

7.00 pm – BOOK LAUNCH
Celebrate the launch of Felicity Pulman’s Unholy Murder
To be launched by Gillian Polack.

7.30 pm – ROUND TABLE DEBATE

Enjoy a lively round table discussion with Kelly Gardiner (Chair), Deborah Challinor, Jesse Blackadder, Rachel Le Rossignol and Gillian Polack as they ponder the question: ‘What can historical novelists and historians learn from each other?

Gearing up for the HNSA inaugural conference in just one week’s time! Here are the sessions where I’ll be appearing(from HNSA program).

20 March 6.00 pm  GUEST SPEAKER – COCKTAILS AND DEBATE

The conference opens with cocktails on Friday 20th March at the State Library of NSW where Sophie Masson is our guest speaker. Felicity Pulman will also launch her new book, Unholy Murder, before a lively round table discussion with Kelly Gardiner (Chair), Deborah Challinor, Jesse Blackadder, Rachel Le Rossignol and Gillian Polack as they ponder the question: ‘What can historical novelists and historians learn from each other?’

21 March 12.15-1.15 pm  Session Four
Can Children’s and Young Adult Fiction Compete with Vampires, Werewolves and Zombies?
In a world where the Twilight and Hunger Games series dominate the CYA shelves, how can historical novelists capture young readers’ imaginations? Sophie Masson explores the issue with Belinda Murrell, Sherryl Clark, Pamela Rushby and Goldie Alexander. 

21 March 2.15-3.15 pm    Session Five
War-torn Worlds: Historical Fiction in Times of Conflict
Vashti Farrer joins Nicole Alexander, Toni Jordan, Kim Kelly and Sophie Masson in discussing why World Wars I and II inspire their fiction, and the challenge of depicting characters who must either overcome, or succumb to, the turbulence of war.
For more information on all the Conference panels, please visit the HNSA site for program details. And you can buy your tickets here.

In this second of my posts about the Historical Novel Society of Australasia’s inaugural conference later this month, I’m linking to a quick interview I did regarding my favourite things–published now on the HNSA blog. Here’s a short extract:

A few of my favourite things…

Book as a child and as a teenager?

As a child: Jules Verne’s fabulous adventure novel, Michel Strogoff, set in the Russia of the Tsars. As a teenager: Katherine, by Anya Seton, set in the Middle Ages in England.

Author/authors?

I love lots of authors, hard to choose! If we’re talking of historical novelists, here are a few: Alexandre Dumas, Theophile Gautier(I grew up in a French-speaking family so much of my childhood reading was in French and I still read a lot in that language); Anya Seton, Sigrid Undset, Robert Graves, Jean Plaidy, Philippa Gregory. And lots more!

Period of history?

Difficult to choose! I love the Middle Ages but also the 19^th century, the Renaissance, and the Ancient Roman age.

Read the whole thing here!

In the next couple of weeks, I’ll be highlighting the upcoming, inaugural Historical Novel Society of Australia conference, which is being held in Sydney from March 20–March 22 (inclusive). It promises to be a wonderful event for both writers and readers of historical novels, with panel discussions, interviews, book launches, pitch and evaluation opportunities, social events, and much more!

I’m a speaker at the Conference, on various panels on the Saturday, but also, in very nice news, I’ve been asked to give the opening speech at the Conference’s official launch and reception, on Friday March 20 at the State Library of NSW in Macquarie Street, Sydney. HNSA patron and my good friend and fellow novelist, Kate Forsyth, will also say a few words.

It should be a fabulous night all round, including cocktails, the launch of Felicity Pulman’s new historical crime novel, and a what sounds like a most intriguing panel discussion on what historical novelists and historians can learn from each other.

Find out more about the Friday reception here, and about the whole Conference here.

Delighted that Three Wishes, one of the novels I wrote under the pen-name of Isabelle Merlin, will be out in an Indonesian edition this year. And here’s the gorgeous cover!

Three Wishes has also previously come out in France, Germany, Poland, the US, UK and of course Australia!

Last year my novel Emilio was published by Allen and Unwin in the Through My Eyes series, which is a series of novels for young people by different authors, about children caught in conflict zones around the world. Mine is set in Mexico, around a very different sort of war. As the last novel in the series, Zafir, by Prue Mason, set in Syria, is about to come out, I thought it might be interesting to revisit my interview last year about Emilio.

The March 2015 issue of the fabulous creative arts online magazine, Art View has an article by me on one of my favourite childhood books, Jules Verne’s Michel Strogoff, as well as an extract from Trinity. 

The magazine’s chock full of wonderful things from artists, film-makers, composers and others. It’s great to be in such good company!

US author Julia Munroe Martin recently asked several other writers, including me, to create a ” love note to writing. It can be sweet, bitter, funny, serious, whatever you like in terms of tone, but it needs to be *to* writing itself.”

The results have been published on the popular international writing blog, Writer Unboxed. It’s a great collection of love notes of all kinds, in prose and poetry. The full piece is here, but this is my contribution:

Natural as breathing, close as my heart, you haunt my nights and magic my days. With you I live an adventure like no other, and dare to dream always.