Monday 8th June 2026
(For adults)
Are you writing historical fiction or researching family history and the past? In this presentation, Khai Virtue and Melinda Tognini will show you how to utilise Trove, a freely accessible digital repository with over 14 billion items, in your historical research. From running basic searches to advanced searches, they will demonstrate how well-defined searches can uncover surprising discoveries.
Bookings are essential for this free event via Humanitix. Light refreshments will be available. You are encouraged to bring your own cup for tea/coffee or water.
Please let us know if you have any access requirements.
About the presenters:
Khai Virtue is a writer of young adult historical fiction and collector of school stories. He was awarded the 2025 Maureen Mann Prize in Creative Writing — Honours from the University of Western Australia and a First Edition fellowship on the 2022-2023 Four Centres Emerging Writers Program. He has appeared at the Totally Lit – Adventures in the Port City festival and is a member of the CBCA WA Branch. Khai has corrected more than 13,000 lines of OCR text in Trove, improving discoverability and access to historical Australian newspapers. He is a qualified librarian and currently works as a NAATI-certified Japanese–English translator.
Melinda Tognini’s feature articles, travel writing, personal essays and flash memoir have been published in magazines and anthologies in Australia and the US. Her first book Many Hearts, One Voice: the story of the War Widows’ Guild in Western Australia was published by Fremantle Press in 2015. Melinda has been teaching, mentoring and facilitating workshops for the past three decades, with the hope of encouraging creativity and empowering others to find their voice. She is currently a PhD candidate at Curtin University, where she is delving into the form, structure and ethics of life writing.