Writing Weird History

Hi Poets and Writerly Folk!
Join Jane Rawson, Fiction Editor for Island, for an interactive workshop on making your historical fiction project a bit – or a lot – stranger.

Whether you’re writing a novel set in the jazz bars of 1930s New York, a short story that takes place in an Industrial Revolution cotton mill, or a multi-generational epic based on the lives of your own ancestors, there’s always room to make things weirder. 

​​In this workshop we’ll look at ​how you can divert your historical fiction down back alleys or infect it with a little magic.

This is a hands-on workshop with thinking and writing exercises, but if you don’t want to read your work out loud you won’t have to.

Participants will:

-          look at some ways established writers have combined research and fantasy

-          consider the ethics of rewriting history

-          discuss how to choose a tweak that makes sense for their own historical fiction

-          develop strategies and techniques for building believable alternative worlds

-          try some tricks with voice and see what it does to ideas about authenticity.

This workshop is suitable for emerging writers, or established writers who want to try something different.

The workshop will be 1pm - 3pm (followed by refreshments and an optional Q&A til 4pm), in The Supper Room, upstairs at Cygnet Townhall.

This is the final session in a series of 3 free writers workshops presented by the Cygnet Community Arts Council. Each session has been facilitated by a literary artist, local to the Huon Valley: a professional poet, a published novelist and non-fiction writer.

Jane lives in the Huon Valley, Tasmania, and works as a writer for a conservation organisation. Her latest novel, A History of Dreams, was published by Brio in 2022 and longlisted for the Tasmanian Literary Awards. Her first novel, A Wrong Turn at the Office of Unmade Lists, won the Most Underrated Book Award and her second novel, From the Wreck, won the Aurealis Award and was longlisted for the Miles Franklin. She is also the author of a non-fiction guide to surviving and living with climate change called The Handbook and a novella, Formaldehyde. Her stories and essays have been published widely.