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Association of Historical Fiction Writers

The Association of Historical Fiction Writers is a Hungarian literary organisation founded in 2013. It has 26 members (9 female and 17 male), who have written more than 900 novels about Hungarian and European history so far.

Ever since its foundation, the Association has organised Hungarian and international literary events and conferences. It carries out professional and publishing activities, helps its members to participate in Hungarian and international cultural events, establishes relations with international partners, receives foreign writers, and releases professional tenders. Members represent the Association in libraries and schools (both within Hungary and among the Hungarian minorities of neighbouring countries) as part of ‘unusual’ history and literature classes held by historical fiction writers.

A few examples for our activities:

– Since 2013, as a result of cooperation between the Association, the Council of Dorog (a town in Northern Hungary) and the Hungarian Prose Workshop, a cultural event called Wine and Literature (BORÍR) has been held yearly.

– In 2016, as a result of cooperation between the Association and two departments of the Pázmány Péter Catholic University, an academic conference ‘The Science of History and Historical Fiction’ was held. Conference papers were presented by Association members alongside renowned academics from the disciplines of History, Literature, and Law. Subsequently, the Pázmány Péter Catholic University and the Association jointly published the presented papers in an edited volume.

– In 2017, with the support of the Hungarian Arts Academy, the Association developed a complex, all-arts-based educational material for project weeks to be held in public education units. The collection of short stories, titled Oratores, Bellatores, Laboratores, included various individual and group exercises, and it was provided for public education units for free.

– In 2017, the Association was included in the programme of the Gyula Castle Days. (Gyula is a town in South-Eastern Hungary.)

– In 2018, the Association organised a summer school for Hungarian minority youth in their summer camp in Gombasek/Gombaszög, Slovakia.

– In 2019, the Association held a writer-reader-meeting in the Fókusz Book Shop in Budapest, and was invited to attend various meetings dedicated to history and traditions, e.g. in Hungarian towns Kőszeg, Eger and Tata.

– In 2020, the Association was once again welcome in Kőszeg, invited by the Chernel Kálmán Town Library to attend an event called ‘Historical Fiction Writers in Kőszeg’.

As part of its publishing activities, the Association has published seven short story collections, with the involvement of all Association members in the artistic process.

In 2016, thanks to an internet-based TV channel, the Association had a regular cultural show called Historical Writing Corner, which is still available on the Association’s YouTube channel. The Association is constantly present in the online space with an own website and a social media (Facebook) site. Since 2019, it operates a Facebook group called Hungarian Historical Novel Reading Challenge, which features a monthly recommendation of one contemporary and one classic historical fiction to read.

Unfortunately, four of our long-standing members (János Rozsnyai, Lajos Csikász, László Urbánszki, Katalin Iván) deceased in the years 2020 and 2021. We are devastated but still honoured to be able to keep their memory alive as a community.

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