Chaplains versus the Safe Schools Coalition
Sam Wallman on religion versus equality in public schools.
Progressive culture since 1954
The Last Word: February
Overland contributors and editors with brief recommendations of books, films, arts and culture that deserve a wider audience.
Andrzej Żuławski and the powerlessness of language
The recent death of Polish director Andrzej Żuławski might at first appear a lesser addition to 2016’s already dramatic body count of influential artists: Lemmy, Bowie, Rivette, Eco, and Harper Lee, to name but a high-profile few. But in the film world, Żuławski’s passing seemed to come from out of nowhere.
John McLaren remembered
Early in the morning of 4 December, Overland lost a great friend and guide when John McLaren died. John was associate editor of Overland from 1966–1993, editor from 1993–1996, and a board member until 2014, when he stood down for health reasons to become, instead, an official Overland patron.
Cursive Letters: the social media menace
Given the public/private crossovers all our lives have become online, it’s hard for people to find the boundaries these days between personality and brand; between what’s appropriate and fun and what’s being a needy whiner. ‘Look at me! Look at me!’ some people’s feeds seem to scream, like a megaphone strapped to a fencepost outside a shop, playing the same promotional copy on a loop. We can get used to it, or we can try to rise above the fate of human clickbait.
February in poetry
This book trawls dirt, gluttony, desire, migrant labour. To say it is ‘amusing’ doesn’t quite cut it.
Governing from the left, for the right
New Zealand’s conservative Prime Minister John Key is indicating that his country’s offer to accept 150 refugees a year from Australia’s immigration system still stands and could include taking some, or all, of the 267 asylum seekers. The offer reflects the general paradox in New Zealand’s approach to refugees and asylum seekers: in a theoretical sense, it looks and feels comparatively generous, yet in a concrete sense it’s not nearly enough.
2015 Judith Wright Poetry Prize shortlist
In its ninth year, the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize continues to attract hundreds of outstanding new poetic works from across Australia and New Zealand. Now, Overland’s retiring poetry editor Peter Minter and Overland’s new poetry editor Toby Fitch have finished blind judging the competition and, after deliberation, have selected a shortlist of eight poems.
Who's afraid of the big bad bluff?
Last month I received a legal letter accusing me of defamation. Someone who was very close to me for many years – but now is not – had read a piece of short fiction I had published and decided a minor character was about them. Like every writer ever born, I have gleaned sentences, character traits and events, and I’ve hodgepodged it all together to try and convey an emotional truth. It’s what we do, right? Never once had I considered defamation.
Vale Umberto Eco
Other than penning some columns for L’Espresso, as he had been doing on a weekly or fortnightly basis for over thirty years, and releasing one more novel, Year Zero, his final public act was to found a new publishing house. He and his collaborators called it the ‘ship of Theseus’, after the vessel that produced the ancient paradox by the same name – could an object still be considered the same object if you replaced all of its parts with identical ones? – and set its course to collide with ‘Mondazzoli’, the corporate behemoth created by the merger of the two largest Italian publishers, Mondadori and Rizzoli.
What comes after #LetThemStay?
Baby Asha’s imminent deportation has been halted, but the struggle is far from over. What are the politics, potentials and pitfalls of Let Them Stay? How could we go from this moment – which is but one in a long history of opposition to the actions of Australia’s Immigration Department – to a broader dismantling of Australia’s racist border regime?
The Bustle hustle
As a writing genre loosely linked to the evolution of opinion editorial, confessional writing offers as much convenience for readers, writers and publishers as it does problems.
It’s cheap for publishers, who don’t have to cultivate writers but do have to boost their audiences. If they pay anything at all, even above a small token, they can still evade per-word rates or full-time employment costs by offering flat fees.
Seeking a publicity expert
About the position: The Overland publicity officer will work primarily with the editorial team to assist in promoting Overland’s ongoing program of events, including print editions, the online magazine, special editions, events, launches, competitions and the annual Subscriberthon.