Foundation for Australian Literary Studies News & Events

News & Events

Upcoming Events | 2026

Publishing at a distance

It is a feature of literary publishing, to be marked by distance and delay. Sometimes there are other ‘d’s involved, depending on your point of view – disappointment, discouragement, and also ‘difficulty’ – the objection voiced by readers. There is distance between the publication of a literary work and its recognition; distance between the pace of publishing driven by the marketplace, and the leisurely pace required by literature; and a third kind of distance, between the places where people expect their reading to come from – the big publishers, capital cities, bestsellers – and where literature might dwell, in the provinces. Then, as a teacher and publisher of Australian literature, looking back over forty years, I face another kind of distance, and the question – how much of it remains?

Find out more and register

Held on the last Friday of the month (except on Public Holidays) at the Townsville Yacht Club.  The book club is facilitated by Tenille McDermott, PhD candidate, College of Arts, Society and Education, James Cook University.

Find out more.

Details coming soon

News

First time author Khin Myint has won this year’s $50,000 Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award for Fragile Creatures: A Memoir. Read more.

Five books have been shortlisted for the prestigious $50,000 Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award in 2025, with the winner set to be announced in September. Read more.

A diverse selection of 10 books has been longlisted for the $50,000 Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award in 2025. Read the full release here.

The Foundation for Australian Literary Studies (FALS) has announced Terri-ann White, Upswell publisher and writer, as the recipient of the third $5000 PF Rowland Manuscript Development Grant offered to support a book project.

Read more here

A longlist of 14 books of all kinds – including fiction, poetry, YA, children’s and memoir – has been announced for the $50 000 Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award for 2026, from a field of more than 230 entries. Read more

The Foundation mourns the loss of Life Governor, Don Gallagher OAM. Don has been part of the Foundation from day one and made an immense contribution over more than 60 years. He will be remembered with deep respect and gratitude.

You can delve into Don's extraordinary life by watching this interview conducted by the Foundation in August 2024.

Don Gallagher's eulogy  "A Wavian Scholar to the Last" by Mark McGinness

Image: Don Gallagher OAM with Emeritus Professor Sandra Harding AO receiving his FALS Life Governor Award.

Past Events

Author Emily Maguire presents The bible, political gossip and a splash of Frida Kahlo: on the importance of wild cultural receptivity and promiscuous curiosity in creative practice.  Find out more and register.

Author Emily Maguire presents The bible, political gossip and a splash of Frida Kahlo: on the importance of wild cultural receptivity and promiscuous curiosity in creative practice.  Find out more and register.

Hosted by the FALS and the English Teachers Association of Queensland (Townsville Branch), this collaboration recognised the depth and breadth of local and emerging authors living, studying, and working in North Queensland.  FALS members and friends heard from local authors about why they write and their latest book, play or research project.

Winners of the Narrative Writing Competition for Senior Students were also announced. See who won here.

Read more about the event.

The Foundation announced it's 2024 Roderick award recipient on Monday 21st October in Townsville.

Melissa Lucashenko’s mesmerising colonial Queensland epic Edenglassie has taken out the Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award for 2024, along with the record $50,000 prize.

Read  more here.

Monday 14 October 2024| 6:00 pm – 7.30 pm

Tim Winton

Tim Winton is the author of 30 books. His work has been widely translated and adapted for film, television, stage and radio. He lives in Western Australia.

View the youtube recording here.

1&2 August 2024 | 6:00 pm

The Foundation for Australian Literary Studies is proud to announce that the 2024 Colin Roderick Memorial Lecture will be hosted by award winning author, Mirandi Riwoe.

The lecture Past, Present, Future: Writing Historical Fiction was presented in conversation with Emma Maguire in Townsville and Roger Osborne in Cairns.

Thursday 25 July 2024 | 6:00 pm – 7.30 pm

In the ongoing climate wars, the Great Barrier Reef has become a symbol of everything that we have to lose from global warming. For years, reports of the world-famous coral being irreversibly bleached have fuelled an ideological battle between those fighting to stop the damage and those who insist the danger is overblown.

Paul Hardisty found himself in the middle of this fight during his six years as CEO of the Australian Institute of Marine Science. In this fascinating, candid and urgent book, he dives into the history of the reef and cuts through the rhetoric to chart the circumstances and acceleration of its decline, as well as the determined efforts to save it.

In Hot Water is a crucial look inside the battle to save one of Australia's greatest treasures, describing what must be done to preserve it, and what is at risk if we fail to do so.

Thursday 20 February | 5:30pm  - 7:45pm

Celebrating our local and emerging authors is hosted by the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies (FALS), the English Teachers Association of Queensland (Townsville Branch) [ETAQ], the Roderick Centre for Australian Literature and Creative Writing together with Mary Who? Bookshop. This collaboration is to recognise the depth and breadth of local and emerging authors living, studying and working in North Queensland.

Join us at Umbrella Studios to celebrate the occasion where we are asking each writer to talk for around five minutes about why they write and their latest book or research project. The event will be facilitated by Heather Fraser, President of ETAQ (Townsville Branch). Local writers include:

  • Nicole Crowe
  • Trisha Fielding
  • Elliot Hannay
  • Veronica Lando
  • Mary Vernon

Helene Kotzas has facilitated the FALS Narrative Writing Competition for Senior Students in 2023 and again in 2024.  Helene will announce the short story winners for the school competition together with the Judges Emeritus Professor Nola Alloway and Dr Cheryl Taylor.

This event is aimed at members and supporters of the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies together with teachers of English and Literature.  There will be an opportunity to purchase books from Mary Who? prior to the event and there will be plenty of time to network.

  • Date: Thursday 20th February 2025
  • Time:   5.30 pm (for a 6 pm start) – 7.45 pm
  • Where:  Umbrella Studio Contemporary Arts, 408 Flinders Street, Townsville
  • Cost:    $10.00 fee for non-FALS members;  Drinks and nibbles will be served.

Find out more about the event and register your attendance.

You can support the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies by becoming a member. Explore membership options here.

About the presenters:

Nicole Crowe

Nicole spent her formative years on Magnetic Island and was in her mid-twenties when she decided she wanted to focus on writing. After a number of false starts in the genres of literary fiction and memoir, she settled on crime writing and her debut novel The Washup, set on Magnetic Island and in Townsville, will be released by Pantera Press (Hardie Grant Publishing) and is due to hit the bookshops in the middle of the year.

When she's not writing Nicole works part time as a Program Advisor for the JCU Roderick Centre for Australian Literature and Creative writing.

Trisha Fielding

Trisha Fielding is an author and historian whose published works include the books Expedition to the Great Barrier Reef (2023), A University for the North (2021), Neither Mischievous nor Meddlesome (2019), Queen City of the North (2016) and the history blogs North Queensland History.

She has written more than 120 historical articles for the Townsville Bulletin and has presented guest lectures, talks and workshops for State Library of Queensland, Museum of Tropical Queensland, James Cook University, Queensland Writers Centre and City Libraries Townsville. Trisha enjoys photography, bushwalking and learning about natural history, and these pursuits inspired her newest blog Travels in the Sublime.

Elliot Hannay

Elliot Hannay is a journalist and author. “Conversations With Katter,” New Holland, “The Colt With No Regrets” Wilkinson publishing.

A former editor of the Townsville Bulletin and a senior ABC News journalist in Brisbane, Townsville and Mackay, he was one of six Australian journalists selected by DFAAT for China’s first media exchange with a Western nation and freelanced in Europe and Asia for AAP.

His books and newspaper articles exposed a home-grown chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in Townsville and also resulted in death threats and $3million stopper writs from Sydney gangsters including Abe Saffron. Elliot has a history of engagement with First Nations’ elders and activists from the divisive Mabo Native Title era to the “Stolen Wages” and “Black Voice” campaigns in the Far North.

Veronica Lando

Veronica grew up above her parents’ Melbourne bookshop surrounded by other people’s stories so it was only a matter of time before she penned one of her own.

A self-confessed atrocious speller with near illegible handwriting, she went into a career in health and science and didn’t come to writing until after having her first child. In a desperate bid to carve out some much needed me time, Veronica turned to creative writing.

In 2021 her then unpublished crime manuscript, The Whispering, won the HarperCollins Banjo Prize for fiction and in 2023 was short listed for the Courier-Mail’s People’s Choice Queensland Book of the Year award.

She has since gone on to publish a second novel and is currently editing her third which is due to be released next year.

In her spare time, she can usually be found hiding from her children in a bid to read just one more page or behind her computer googling the various way to dispose of a dead body.

Mary Vernon

Mary is a Life Governor, Foundation for Australian Literary Studies and is on the judging panel for the Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award.  Mary will give her insights on being a Judge.

Born in Perth Western Australia, Mary has worked as a journalist in most states of Australia and several other countries. As well as her considerable experience in writing, reporting, layout, editing and uploading web content she started reviewing books for The Australian in the early 1980s. She took over as Books Editor at the Townsville Bulletin when Colin Roderick retired from that position while also being, in turn, deputy editor, features editor, production editor, and daily columnist at the Townsville Bulletin in North Queensland. She has edited several books and anthologies and, like most journalists, is working on the Great Australian Novel, as well as having almost completed a history of food on Magnetic Island.

Besides working in print with a variety of regional papers, she has also worked in radio and is still heard most Friday afternoons on ABC Radio Townsville as part of their drive time show. She worked as tutor and mentor for News Limited online training college for young journalists for 10 years and spent six months in Myanmar in 2005, mentoring and training journalists on the Myanmar Times in Yangon, an experience she found very satisfying, although difficult.

Heather Fraser

Heather has been an English teacher for forty-two years in the Northern Region and a Head of Department English in a variety of schools for many years. Heather has been President of English Teachers’ Association of Queensland – Townsville Branch for thirty-three years.

Heather has won an ACEL award for highest result in Masters in Educational Leadership and has won two national Teaching Awards for Educational Leadership and Teaching. She is also a Peter Botsman and Life Member of ETAQ.

Heather is currently lecturing at James Cook University in English Education.

Acclaimed author Bri Lee  discussed her recently released new book, The Work.

Hosted by FALS in partnership with MaryWho? Bookshop and publisher Allen & Unwin Books.

The English Teachers Association Queensland (ETAQ) [Townsville Branch] and the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies (FALS)  recognised the depth and breadth of local authors living and working in Townsville.

The hosts asked authors to talk for five minutes about why they write and their latest book or poem.

On 14th August 2023, FALS hosted award-winning writer, Anna Funder, in partnership with Mary Who? Bookshop and Penguin Random House.

Anna discussed her bestselling new book Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of AIMS, the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies (FALS) and the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) offered six writers the opportunity to participate in a one-week writing residency at the remote tropical science facility in North Queensland. Read more about this event.