Learn to draw from the past to tell engaging and authentic historical stories.

In this three-hour workshop, you will learn how to bring historical stories to life through your writing.

Author, editor and former librarian/archivist Jane Smith will provide a brief introduction to the research process, including tips on where to find reliable information sources and how to organise your research findings. You will learn how to approach the research and writing and discover how the approach might differ depending on whether your work is fiction or non-fiction. You’ll get ideas on how to deal with those inevitable gaps in the research. You’ll also learn how to bring your historical setting and characters to life while avoiding some of the more common traps historical writers face.

This session is suitable for writers of both fiction and non-fiction. Whether you’re writing only for your family or for publication, and whether you intend to self-publish or submit to traditional publishers, this course will give you a solid introduction to the process.

Learning outcomes

As part of this workshop, you will learn to:

Discover sources of useful information for historical research (and understand how the sources you seek might be different depending on whether you are writing fiction or non-fiction)
Organise your research findings using annotated timelines
Use details of characters and setting to bring your historical story to life
Avoid some of the common pitfalls in historical writing

Format

This is an in-person workshop with a focus on writing craft; it will be held at State Library of Queensland. This workshop is suitable for beginner fiction and non-fiction historical writers of all backgrounds.

About Jane

Jane Smith is an award-nominated author, archivist, librarian and freelance book editor dedicated to resurrecting captivating tales from history’s depths for readers of all ages. Jane has a large portfolio of fiction and non-fiction, having published more than twenty books with a historical focus. She received a 2024 Visiting Fellowship with the Harry Gentle Resource Centre (Griffith University) to research and write Hannah Rigby’s biography. Jane has received multiple national prestigious literary award nominations – most notably a 2021 shortlisting for the Frank Broeze Memorial Maritime History Book Prize for Ship of Death, and an ABIA shortlisting in 2015 for Captain Thunderbolt, a standout from her ‘Australian Bushrangers’ series. Her book One Free Woman: The True Story of Convict Hannah Rigby was longlisted in 2026 for the Magarey Medal for Biography.

For more information about Queensland Writers Centre’s Program of Events and answers to FAQs, please visit: www.queenslandwriters.org.au/program-info

Contact the host of Digging Up the Past with Jane Smith

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