Join the History Council of South Australia and the Professional Historians Association to celebrate the breadth and vitality of history writing in Australia.

Held at Ern Malley Bar, Magill Road, Stepney, this special event runs from 5.00–8.00pm on Thursday 5 March and features two lively panel discussions exploring both historical non-fiction and historical fiction.

We are deeply grateful to the Marsden Szwarcbord Foundation for their financial assistance for this event.

Across the evening, leading historians and novelists will discuss their craft, research, storytelling, and the challenges of bringing the past to life for contemporary readers. The program includes two 45-minute panels, separated by a 30-minute break.

The historical non-fiction panel, chaired by HCSA president and author Matthew Fitzpatrick, features:

Paul Sendziuk, co-author of A History of South Australia (Cambridge)
Martin Thomas, Clever Men
Janet Scarfe, Her Great Adventure: Dorothy “Puss” Campbell, WW2 Army Nursing Sister

The historical fiction panel, chaired by HCSA vice-president and author Lainie Anderson, features:

Molly Murn, The Heart of the Grass Tree
Lyn Dickens, Salt Upon the Water
Beverley McWilliams, Spies in the Sky

Books will be available for purchase and signing on the night through Matilda Bookstore.

Whether you’re a reader, writer, historian, or simply fascinated by the past, this is a rare chance to hear some of Australia’s most compelling historical voices in conversation.

The Marsden Szwarcbord Foundation Ltd was established to address a significant cultural and funding gap in Australia by establishing a philanthropic organisation to directly fund the production of historical literature. www.mszfhistory.org.au

We also thank Ern Malley Bar for their support of this event.

Author bios

Lainie Anderson is a writer and author. After being awarded a Churchill Fellowship, she published her debut novel Long Flight Home with Wakefield Press in 2019. In 2024, Lainie completed a PhD on Kate Cocks – the inspiration behind the Petticoat Police Mysteries, published by Hachette Australia. Murder on North Terrace is the second novel in the Petticoat Police Mystery series, following The Death of Dora Black, which was longlisted for the 2025 Indie Book Awards for Debut Fiction and the 2025 Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award.

Lyn Dickens is an award-winning writer, editor and academic living on unceded Kaurna land. Her debut novel Salt Upon the Water was the winner of the 2024 Arts South Australia Wakefield Press Unpublished Manuscript Award and published in late 2025. She is the 2025 Arts and Culture category winner of the Asian Australian Leadership Awards. Lyn has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Adelaide and is a member of the JM Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice.

Matt Fitzpatrick is the Matthew Flinders Professor of International History at Flinders University. He specialises in international history, in particular German and European history, Pacific history as well as the history of European imperialism, liberalism and the history of globalisation. In 2024 he co-authored An Indigenous South: German Writers on Colonial South Australia with fellow Flinders University historian Peter Monteath. His most recent monographs are A Pacific Power: Liberal Imperialism in Samoa and The Kaiser and the Colonies: Monarchy in the Age of Empire.

Molly Murn is a South Australian poet, author and bookseller. She holds a Bachelor of Dance, a Master of Creative Arts and a PhD in Creative Writing. Molly is also the manager of Matilda Bookshop in the Adelaide Hills. Her debut novel Heart of the Grass Tree was published in 2019 with Penguin Random House (Vintage) and was shortlisted for the Debut Fiction Indie Book Awards 2020, and the MUD literary Prize for best new fiction. Her second novel Radiance is due to be published in early 2027.

Janet Scarfe is a research student, public servant, activist, historian and biographer who has contributed around 60 biographical essays to the Virtual War Memorial Australia website. Publications include family history, biography and controversies around the ordination of women in the Anglican Church in Australia. In 2024 she published Her Great Adventure: Dorothy ‘Puss’ Campbell WW2 Army Nursing Sister, a groundbreaking, factual and engaging study of Australian army sisters beyond the small number who died or were captured.

Paul Sendziuk is an Associate Professor of Australian History at Adelaide University, with expertise in the histories of disease, labour, immigration and education. He is the author or editor of six books, including A History of South Australia, Learning to Trust: Australian Responses to AIDS, In the Eye of the Storm: Volunteers and Australia's Response to the HIV/AIDS Crisis, and most recently Vision and Hope: A History of St Mark's College, 1925-2025.

Martin Thomas is a historian, filmmaker, broadcaster, and prize-winning author whose work grapples with empire, invasion, and the endurance of Indigenous cultures. In books and essays, he has written about expeditions, exploration, anthropology, and the meetings between cultures. Martin won the National Biography Award for The Many Worlds of R. H. Mathews: In search of an Australian anthropologist and the Mark and Evette Nib Literary Award for his latest book, Clever Men: How worlds collided on the scientific expedition to Arnhem Land of 1948 (Allen & Unwin).

Beverley McWilliams is an award-winning author with a passion for historical fiction. Her middle-grade novel Spies in the Sky won the ARA Historical Novel Prize 2024, was shortlisted for the Readings Prize and longlisted for the Booklinks Award for Historical Fiction. Beverley’s published picture books include Willow’s Gumboots, which was the Speech Pathology Book of the Year 2025. She was recently awarded a South Australian History Trust grant to research her next historical novel set in South Australia.

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