Novelists Kate Grenville and Kim Scott joined acclaimed biographer Selina Hastings to discuss delving into the past to create historically based works of fiction and engrossing biographies.

Kate Grenville’s The Secret River, a novel inspired by the darker regions of Kate’s own family history and set in Australia’s settler past, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Kim Scott’s multi award-winning novel, That Deadman Dance, explores the early contact between the Aboriginal Noongar people and the first European settlers in Albany, Western Australia. Selina Hastings’ provocative and thoughtful biographies have uncovered the lives of Evelyn Waugh, Nancy Mitford and Somerset Maugham. Paula Morris chaired this session.