Small Towns, Big Skies: Regional Crime Writing

Cost: Free, but booking essential via Eventbrite. 

Crime novelists Garry Disher, Katherine Kovacic and Shelley Burr will discuss writing genre fiction, character, crime, and place at the Roxy Theatre, Ouyen, on Thursday 29 June hosted by Angela Savage, crime writer and CEO of Public Libraries Victoria.

Between them, the panellists (and their host), have published more than 70 crime novels. The event Small towns, Big skies: Regional crime writing will offer audiences an opportunity to hear about the craft of writing crime fiction and how regional settings – the experience and particularities of rural life and landscape – shape storytelling.

Brigid Magner, event co-ordinator says “We’re delighted to bring Small towns, Big skies: Regional crime writing to Ouyen as smaller towns often miss out on events such as these.  When talking about books with people around the Mallee, we have found that the crime genre really resonates there.  We encourage everyone to come along to the Roxy, whether they read crime fiction or not.

The free event is hosted by ‘Reading in the Mallee’, an ARC-funded project led by Emily Potter, Brigid Magner and Torika Bolatagici, exploring the literary history of the Mallee region in collaboration with Mallee readers. The Mallee has captured the imaginations of scores of writers and storytellers, yet this rich and diverse literary heritage is little known both outside and within the region itself.

A major aspect of the project is its encouragement of local communities to add to the project’s findings through reading events with Mallee residents, including book groups, shared reading events, literary walks and community reading spaces.

The project coordinators understand ‘the Mallee’ in an expansive sense, not limited by local government boundaries. While the focus is the Victorian Mallee, the many histories that have fed into the making of this region extend it imaginatively beyond this and connect it to many places elsewhere.