Van Diemen’s Land [today]

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First published in 2008, James Boyce’s now classic tome, Van Diemen’s Land, was described as “the most significant history since The Fatal Shore” by Richard Flanagan, and awarded both the Tasmania Book Prize and Colin Roderick Literary Award.

On the launch of a new edition of Van Diemen’s Land, esteemed scholars and writers, Lucy Frost and Andrew Harwood will reflect with James on historical understandings of convict society and how ‘Van Diemen’s Land’ still shapes ‘Tasmania’.

James Boyce is a multi-award-winning writer and historian. His books include 1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia (also now available in a new edition!), Losing Streak: How Tasmania was Gamed by the Gambling Industry and Imperial Mud: The Fight for the Fens. He is currently working on a new history of the British Invasion of Australia.

Dr. Andrew Harwood is a lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Tasmania. Andrew’s PhD was on the political constitution of ‘islandness’ in Tasmania, and he is passionate about reflection and research on what it means to be ‘Tasmanian’.

Lucy Frost is an Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Tasmania, and has spent a career researching and writing about nineteenth-century women and children. She has particular interests in the impact of convict transportation on women and their children, and on the inter-generational effects of the convict experience. She is the author of Abandoned Women, No Place for a Nervous Lady and most recently, Convict Orphans.

Join James, Andrew and Lucy for an in-depth panel discussion on ideas of historical and contemporary Tasmania.