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Type
Announcement
Category
Prizes

Shortlist for the Judith Wright Poetry Prize

We’d like to thank the 650 entrants for their impressive work this year. Now, the 2018 judges – Alison Whittaker, Nguyễn Tiên Hoàng and Toby Fitch – have arrived at a shortlist of nine outstanding poems.

Cunts... and other conversations
Type
Article
Category
Sexuality
The Body

Female genital appearance: what is normal?

Anatomical naming of the female genitals has historically been imprecise, vague and confused. For example, what the ancient Greeks termed the ‘nymphe’ (for the clitoris) would later be applied to the labia minora by the anatomist Vesalius, who thought that the clitoris was a biological abnormality and not a part of the vulva.

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Type
Article
Category
Migration

Rethinking immigration: Argentina’s open borders

The preamble to the Argentine constitution makes no distinction between Argentines and anyone else, simply stating that its provisions apply to ‘all people who to wish to live on Argentine soil. ’ Additionally, Article 20 states that ‘foreigners in the nation’s territory are entitled to all the civil rights of citizens. ’

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Type
Article
Category
Reconstruction
The city

Welcome to Christchurchland

It is the eighth anniversary of the earthquakes that devastated Christchurch, and much of the rebuild is now complete. The brash new complexes in the retail core scream ‘progress’, with multiple outlets competing for the high-end clothing dollar, while craft beer bars and gastropubs overlook the Avon River as it meanders through the city. This is Christchurchland, a city that hums with dystopian unease, with new developments that erase not just the history but also the very purpose of the city.

fraggle rock
Type
Article
Category
pop culture

Work your cares away: Revisiting Fraggle Rock

The year is 1982. US President Ronald Reagan is ankle-deep in his first term. Across the pond, Margaret Thatcher will soon be elected Prime Minister of the UK. Everyone’s shaking hands with free market capitalism, neoliberal ideals, and a hostile brand of shark-eyed individualism that will endure for decades to come. Jim Henson is having none of it.

Lynas
Type
Article
Category
Activism
Environment

The victory against Lynas and environmental solidarity

On 4 December 2018, the Australian rare earth mining company Lynas suffered a critical setback to its operations in the Malaysian city of Kuantan. The Malaysian minister of energy, science, technology, environment and climate change declared that the mining giant can no longer operate without a plan to safely dispose of its radioactive waste. The announcement came off the back of more than a decade of grassroots activism against the multinational company.

Tocarczuk
Type
Review

February in fiction

Koraly Dimitriadis hails from a strict Greek Orthodox migrant background and her work is a consistent and vividly burning ‘fuck you’ to tradition, to repression, and to the idea that we must accept the roles allotted us with strangled fortitude. If Dimitriadis’ narrative contains a recommendation it is that we get the hell out of there, wherever the oppressive there might be, and emerge, phoenix-like, from the ashes.