Tag: historical fiction
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Writing Across Worlds
By Alix Christie When I got the call that summer day in 2015 inviting me to visit McDonald Ranch, I let out a whoop at the wheel of my rental car. I was on the Flathead Indian Reservation in northwestern Montana doing preliminary research for what would become my second historical novel, The Shining Mountains. It’s the 19th-century story…
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HNS 2024 First Chapters Competition Category Winners Announced Today
The Historical Novel Society First Chapters Competition is a major new writing competition for excellence in historical fiction for the first three chapters of an unpublished novel. First prize is £1,000. Nine Category Winner Awards for £500 each. In its first year, the competition received over 400 high-calibre entries. The nine Category Winners are announced…
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Making the Genre Pivot
by Donna Jones Alward Do we all remember 2020? Of course, we do. It was the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the beginning of life as we knew it changing. My life was no different. My husband was facing a potential layoff; in the meantime, lockdowns meant he started working from home. In addition to…
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Romanticising Scotland: The Impact of Historical Fiction by VEH Masters
Culross is a very pretty village set on the opposite of the Firth of Forth to Edinburgh and one of the locations used to film the Outlander series. Sitting in a café there I got chatting to a lovely American who was on an Outlander tour. ‘We did Edinburgh yesterday,’ she said, ‘and we’re doing the Highlands today.’ ‘Wow…
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What does it mean to be Roman? by Alison Morton
What do you see in your mind’s eye when somebody says ‘Roman’? asks Alison Morton. A Roman soldier in segmented armour, a senator in a purple striped toga, a Roman matron in stola and palla? Or perhaps Vorenus, Pullo and Atia of the Julii from HBO’s Rome or Russell Crowe aka Maximus Decimus Meridius in Gladiator. Or maybe the rather bizarre series Britannia with David…
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The Historical Novelist Confronts Real-Life Characters by Patricia Bernstein
Patricia Bernstein on the pros and cons of depicting real-life characters in historical fiction. Contemporary critics have complained about novelists who depict characters of recent memory, even sometimes pretending to reproduce their thoughts without any proof that these people ever thought any such thing. In the novel Blonde, for instance, Joyce Carol Oates goes so far…
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HNS 2024 First Chapters Competition is Open
The First Chapters Competition is open for entries until 15 Feb 2024. First three chapters + a synopsis of a historical novel. £1,000 first prize. Full details are here.
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Conference Booking is Open
Early Bird conference booking is open on this link. Early Bird deadline is 1 May 2024 but capacities at Dartington are limited so book early to avoid disappointment. Part of the conference will be available for an online audience. You can register here for the online conference. We are also running a programme of sessions…
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Living Memory by Elizabeth Loudon
In this inaugural HNS UK 2024 blogpost, Elizabeth Loudon asks what is a historical novel and what can a historical novelist legitimately write about. Living Memory ‘I know this book is about historical events,’ said the editor moderating a book group discussion of my novel, A Stranger In Baghdad, ‘but I don’t think it is a historical novel.’…
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Call for Blogposts
In the run-up to the HNS UK 2024 conference, we are posting a series of blogposts here on the website, aiming to kick off dialogues and debates that we can continue together in the conference itself. Blogposts should address a current issue in historical fiction writing, reading, or publishing. They should be under 1,000 words.…
The Historical Novel Society UK 2024 conference 