Historical Fiction: A Contradiction in Terms?

Our July general meeting features Robyn Cadwallader, talking about historical fiction.

To register to attend in person visit the Trybooking page by 3 pm on 31 July. Registering helps us with catering, but isn’t essential.

Date: Wednesday 31 July 2024

Time: 5:45 pm (for drinks and nibbles), 6:30 pm (talk and webinar)

Dinner If you’d like to join others for dinner at Portia’a Place after the talk, see the details below.

About the presentation

Historical fiction is a genre both loved and dismissed by many. Nineteenth-century author Henry James declared that historical fiction could not escape ‘a fatal cheapness’, unable to capture the ‘old consciousness’, while less than a century later, William Faulkner said, ‘The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even over.’ After researching and writing three medieval historical novels, Robyn Cadwallader has learned that historical fiction is a conversation we have with the past, an exchange of ideas and perspective, as much about ourselves as those of the past.

About Robyn Cadwallader

Robyn Cadwallader is an editor and writer who lives in Ngunnawal country outside Canberra. She has published poems, prize-winning short stories and reviews, a poetry collection, i painted unafraid, and a non-fiction book based on her PhD thesis about virginity and female agency in the Middle Ages. In response to the government’s punitive treatment of asylum seekers, she edited a collection of essays on asylum seeker policy, We Are Better Than This (2015).

Her first novel, The Anchoress (2015, Fourth Estate Australia, Faber & Faber, UK, Farrer, Straus & Giroux, US and Gallimard France) was received with critical acclaim. It was awarded a Canberra Critics’ Circle Award for fiction, was Highly Commended in the ACT Book of the Year Award and was nominated for the Indie Book Awards, the Adelaide Festival Literary Awards and the ABIA Awards.

Her second novel, Book of Colours (Fourth Estate, 2018) won the 2019 ACT Book of the Year Award, a Canberra Critics’ Award and was shortlisted for the Voss Award. The Fire and the Rose (Fourth Estate, 2023), her third novel, was nominated for the ARA Historical Fiction Award.

To attend in person

Please register on the Trybooking page by 3 pm on 31 July if you wish to attend in person. Registering helps us with catering. You are always welcome to attend in person if you haven’t registered.

Where:

The Durie Room
St Mark’s National Theological Centre
15 Blackall St (not Blackall Place)
Barton
See MAP.

When:

The room opens at 5:45 pm. The presentation begins at 6:30 pm.

Need to cancel?

Return your ticket directly into the TryBooking system to make it available for someone else and help us keep track of numbers. Please do not attend if you are feeling unwell or showing any symptoms of COVID-19, cold or flu.

Dinner

We plan to dine from 8pm at Portia’a Place in Kingston after the presentation. Please join us to continue the conservation and get to know your fellow editors better. Booking is essential so we can confirm bookings with the restaurant.

Portia’s Palace
11 Kennedy Street
Kingston

menu

To attend the webinar (via Zoom)

A link for the Zoom meeting will be supplied to all members by email. If you are not a member and wish to attend by Zoom, please send an email to the contact email address you will find on the About page and ask to be sent a link. Please do not pass on your link to other people.

The webinar audience can use Zoom’s Q&A functionality to ask questions or offer opinions. (You will not be able to see the presentation or participate in the Q&A if you attend by phone call.)

The webinar will not be recorded.