Port Fairy author Jock Serong has been shortlisted for a major new literary award for his novel The Burning Island.
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He is one of three authors in the running for the $100,000 ARA Historical Novel Prize from the Historical Novel Society Australasia, saying it was "a real surprise" and "honour" to be shortlisted.
The Burning Island is the second volume in a trilogy inspired by the tumultuous colonial history of the Furneaux Islands off Tasmania's north-east coast.
Serong said the story of the area in the early 1800s was "a really overlooked bit of our history" and he hoped his novel would put it in the spotlight.
"I have high hopes people will go away and think about it and keep reading about it," he said.
Australia is in a golden age of mainstream historical writing according to Serong.
"There are great historians writing books for the general public... then you have Australian authors reappraising our history," he said.
Asked whether south-west Victoria might provide the setting for a future novel, Serong said he had been shocked when he saw a map of Colonial Frontier Massacres produced by the University of Newcastle.
"I was shocked to see the biggest, darkest red blobs on the map were over western Victoria,"Serong said.
He said it was a troubling history he wanted to explore more deeply.