Progressive culture since 1954
The psychology of internet dating can best be described as a kind of schizoid hyper-vigilance, with violent swings of hope and doubt. In this environment in which connections are swift but commitments uncertain, one begins to despair and obsess over the quantity, quality, and frequency of messages. Dating websites might be very good at creating expectations, but they are not so good at helping you manage them.
Natalie Wood had lived in the same house on Kippax Street in Surry Hills for most of her life. She was an elderly woman, a retired machinist at David Jones and a divorced war bride. It is likely that she died in early 2004, though police didn’t find her body until they searched her house in 2011. By then, part of her ceiling had caved in and a tree had spread into an upstairs room. Canisters of expired coffee and condensed milk were found amongst her other possessions, such as jewellery and her medications. There was dust and cobwebs.
The three judges for the first year of the competition – Alice Pung, Ellen van Neerven and Stephanie Convery – have now finished their blind judging and deliberation, and decided on a shortlist of eight outstanding stories with varying approaches to the theme, ‘travel’.
I turn the situation obsessively, calculating routes and modes and travel times, but the result is always the same. I’m spending almost as long travelling to work as actually working. I’ve heard it said that Melbourne is a most liveable city, but how can that be? Travel between regional towns and centres, and the city, has stretched to unbelievable lengths for what is a twenty-first century, first-world context. The median cost of rent has jumped to over $400 a week in Melbourne.
Every year, Overland publishes several online editions showcasing work by new and emerging writers. An opportunity exists for an emerging editor to work on one of these online fiction editions, to be published in August 2016.