What our readers, contributors & editors loved (or didn't love) in 2018
We asked Overland contributors, volunteers, staff and editors to share their highs and lows of 2018.
Progressive culture since 1954
Until the new year!
Updates on holiday office hours, our new edition and summer writer opportunities.
And a big shoutout to all our readers, contributors, submitters, volunteers and interns throughout the past year. We say it every year but it’s so very true: Overland would be impossible without you!
A left case against borders: a response to, among others, Angela Nagle
Nagle claims that the liberal-left position on immigration reflects its elite detachment from the concerns of ordinary people: the American workers whose livelihoods are threatened by an influx of cheap labour.
Noplace
Message Received 21/06/2051:
MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY. Immediate evacuation requested, sanctuary and aid requested. MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY.
Reply Sent 30/06/2051:
Attn: Noplace, mayday received. Parliament is discussing your situation, expect decision within six months. Please tender more information on your situation to assist with Parliament’s decision. Please state the nature of the emergency.
The eleven best Australian essays of the past 3,533 days
It begins with the admission that my entire life is a facade. I teach but am not a teacher, write but am not a writer, edit but am not an editor, take photographs but am not a photographer. On occasion I have attempted to make art or play music, yet I am the mere simulacrum of an artist, the bare chalk outline of a musician. Moreover, I hold no claim to scholarly influence, nor do I pretend to boast any kind of public reputation. The ultimate confirmation of this – if you enter my name into Wikipedia, it responds: Did you mean: dead bison?
In the grip of Melbourne: revisiting Monkey Grip
Text’s new edition of Helen Garner’s 1977 novel Monkey Grip is an opportunity to revisit the book’s influence on Melbourne. In addition to being widely considered a classic of Australian fiction, Monkey Grip is frequently referred to as an iconic ‘Melbourne’ novel. Certainly, it is a novel absolutely grounded in and shaped by place. For Nora, the narrator and protagonist, it is the locus of the social encounter and emotional intensity on which the book’s narrative depends.
Remembering Roberta Perkins
Pindi remembers running from the cops with Roberta at her side. It was Darlinghurst in the late 1970s, when being a sex worker was a crime, and transgender sex workers in particular were targeted by police. Scared of being arrested, Pindi stuck out her leg, apologised, and sent her friend flailing to the ground. Through the tumble of her own limbs, Roberta may have seen Pindi dart around a corner and disappear.
Writers, submit your short fiction to our ‘future sex’ edition!
Overland is seeking fiction submissions for a special online edition themed around ‘future sex’, to be edited by Michalia Arathimos. We are looking for stories that engage with what our changing sexualities look like, both now and in the future.
Like light on the sea floor
Ota Yoko (1903-1963) was the only prominent novelist to survive the bombing of Hiroshima. After it, she wrote only essays and fictional stories, which documented the experiences of victims, carving out the field of atomic literature in which she is renowned. Her obsessive dedication to realistically relating what happened was driven by her conviction that she was the only one left to do so. Burdened by survivor responsibility, she wrote on tranquilisers to dull the visceral trauma triggered by remembering, and struggled to find the right words, saying new vocabulary was needed to render ‘the reality of Hiroshima’.
From boomer to millennial bust
‘New York Millennial can’t afford to move to DC before her job in Congress starts’ read a recent headline in VICE for an article on how Congressmember-Elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez couldn’t yet afford to move to Washington DC, as the rents in the city are so high.
Not a week goes by without a media report revealing how difficult it is for young people to afford a house; simultaneously, we’re inundated by articles on disgustingly wealthy baby-boomers.
Subjects of the imagination: on dropping the settler pen
In 1857, English journalist and author Frank Fowler visited the colony of NSW and wrote with much excitement that ‘our fictionists have fallen upon the soil of Australia, like so many industrious diggers and though merely scratching and fossicking the surface have turned up much precious and malleable stuff.’ Fowler’s brief nineteenth-century summation of the Australian literary landscape still resonates today.
Travelling a darling river
We came from Melbourne up over the Great Dividing Range to be atop the Barrier Range. Then onward to a river camp in the corner country of northwest New South Wales. The idea was to travel once more to the desert, starting at Broken Hill, then camp, explore, immerse ourselves and stay awhile, not just hop from roadside postcard photoshoot to national pretty park, not to blithely pass through.
In the act of eating: food culture in late capitalism
Somehow over the last decade, food has become supreme arbiter – moving around the cultural landscape and absorbing our biggest fears and desires, before transforming everything into a café-ready salve. What’s strange about food culture’s claim to authenticity is not so much the baroque propositions – slow food, local food, homemade food – only that the stuff we eat has taken on such a potent, transformative quality in the first place.