Writing Crime Fiction - Jo Dixon
Under the Crime Umbrella: Justice, revenge, lust, loathing and loot.
From cosy to cops, serial killer to suspense, understand the building blocks needed to craft your crime novel.
Over thirteen years ago, Jo Dixon moved from suburban Brisbane to rural Tasmania, where she now writes full-time. She has released three bestselling suspense novels, and has been shortlisted for the Ned Kelly awards, the Danger awards, and the Davitt awards. Her fourth book is currently being transformed from a pile of scribbled notes to words on the screen.
Registration Information
In case of emergency, phone number is a required field if you are booking tickets for anyone under 18 years old. A mobile phone number is preferable.
TASWRITERS STUDENT MEMBER TICKETS:
Only 1 ticket per student member.
A maximum of 5 Student Member tickets per workshop.
CANCELLATION POLICY:
Cancelling your registration four days or more before the workshop: you can request a 50% refund of the fee.
Cancelling your registration within four days of the workshop: there is no refund of the fee. However, instead of forfeiting the fee, you can do another workshop for half price.
Notice of Annual General Meeting 2026
Thursday 21st May 2026
Members and friends, please join us at
the Devil's Lair at WOTSO,
162 Macquarie Street, Hobart
for the Annual General Meeting of TasWriters.
Refreshments from 5.30pm. The meeting will start at 6.00pm.
Things to note:
2026 AGM Agenda, 2025 AGM Minutes, a Board Nomination Form, and a Proxy Form.
The Board of Management is seeking new Board members.
We welcome nominations from people with relevant skills and experience, and particularly in the following areas: accounting, IT Administration, philanthropy/fundraising, legal background.
More information on roles and responsibilities can be found on our website.
Nominations for Board members must be submitted by 11:59pm Wednesday 13th May to admin@taswriters.org
The subject of these emails should be:
"Board Nomination" nominee name.
Sue Kennedy
Public Officer for TasWriters
Starting and Finishing Stories with Ben Walter
Some of the most difficult elements of writing short stories include developing a gripping opening, and closing out the ending in a way that resonates with readers. In this workshop, we'll spend time discussing how we can do this more effectively, workshopping a range of possibilities to draw readers into our stories and then impact them in way that lingers well beyond the page.
Ben Walter is a Walkley Award-winning essayist, a past fiction editor at Island, and the author of the acclaimed short story collection What Fear Was and the poetry collection Lithosphere. Internationally, his stories have appeared in The Cimarron Review (US), 3:AM Magazine (France) and The Kenyon Review (US), one of the world's most prestigious literary magazines. His work has appeared regularly in Australia’s major periodicals, including Meanjin, Overland, Island, Griffith Review and The Saturday Paper.
Writing History: A Human Endeavour
with James Boyce
In this workshop, writer and historian James Boyce will reflect on how some of his ideas have grown into a book and ponder how history is made from the scant glimpses we have into past human experience.
How did the topic get chosen? Did the questions change? What are the stages each project went through? How was the mass of research sifted and sorted into a readable narrative? What is it just a rational process or also a dialogue with the unknown?
James will make the case that while even the best trained robot cannot write real history, YOU can.
Bio: Out of a conviction that the past lives in the present, and that history need not be ‘dumbed down’ to be accessible, for 20 years James Boyce has sought to make his living by writing serious history for a general readership.
His first book, Van Diemen’s Land, was described by Tim Flannery as ‘the first ecologically based social history of colonial Australia’ that was a ‘must read for anyone interested in how land shapes people’.
1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia, that reimagined the cultural and legal context for the conquest of the continent, was the Age Book of the year. Both colonial histories won the Tasmanian Book Prize and won or were short listed in multiple other national book awards.
His other books include Born Bad: Original Sin and the Making of the Western World, Losing Streak: How Tasmania was Gamed by the Gambling Industry and Imperial Mud: The Fight for the Fens. His latest tome, Origins: The Making of Australia 1788-1825 will be released by Black Inc later this year.
Writing for the screen - Julia Kalyitis (full day)
[More information to come]
If you experience difficulties please email us on admin@taswriters.org and we will respond as soon as we can.
Email: admin@taswriters.org
Address:G.P.O Box 90 HobartTasmania 7001