Cairns Tropical Writers' Festival

This year the Roderick Centre hosted a panel featuring Cairns writers Dr Elizabeth Smyth (Roderick Centre staff and JCU PhD alumni), Dr Louise Henry (JCU PhD Alumni), and Dr Gillian Long (JCU PhD Alumni) to discuss the question, 'How does a writer craft a novel set in the Wet Tropics?'

Elizabeth Smyth uses magic realism to explore human relationships with nature, Louise Henry draws on family history and historical artefacts to link the past and present, and Gillian Long employs an immigrant perspective to examine class and ideological issues of the 1930s. It was a conversation about techniques, problems, ethics, culture, and place.