Overland literary journal

It's appropriate that Taylor Swift flew into Australia a few days after Valentine's Day. Without wishing to erase any queer readings of Swift’s work, the pluralities of love she sometimes speaks to and her capacity for nostalgia, it seems to me that the somewhat monolithic shadow of romantic love tends to fall over all of them and structure her whole project.

We, the undersigned, wish to affirm our solidarity with Professor Hage during this difficult time. He remains a leading voice in global debates about racism and ethno-nationalism. We extend that solidarity to all those who, like Ghassan, work to deepen understanding of intellectual and ideological processes that threaten the rights and dignity of people everywhere. As Australian or Australia-based scholars, teachers and students, we call on our own academic institutions to protect intellectual freedoms at a time when free speech is increasingly under threat elsewhere.

But think about the children, super cute children, mute children, with uncommonly big eyes, children with hard eyes, eyes that have seen what no child’s eyes should see, children naked as the day wearing big smiles and no smiles, preternaturally wise, with mooned-out tummies and cleft palates and cataracts, deformities and birth defects ...

We, the Board of Overland literary journal, make the following statement in support of Editors-in-chief Evelyn Araluen and Jonathan Dunk and the entire Overland staff. We are a diverse Board made up of writers, unionists, lawyers, academics, activists, and arts industry workers. Our Board includes First Nations peoples as well as members of Australia’s Jewish community.

It’s been said that Red Dead Redemption 2 ‘represents perhaps the most important intervention into the Western genre of the twenty-first century.’ Far from being dead, this genre has evolved through the years, constantly subverting its own tropes and reinventing itself. Positioning RDR2 within the context of the Western genre and comparing it to the canon it draws from highlights the genre’s ability to welcome narratives that have in the past been excluded, as well as the possibilities present within the medium of video games.

We, the undersigned scholars and practitioners of law, human rights, international relations and conflict studies of New Zealand, call on the New Zealand government to act without delay to ensure it is fully compliant with its obligations at international law in light of the ruling by the International Court of Justice on 26 January 2024 in the Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip.

Currently, in Gaza, Israel is destroying the institutional basis for the reproduction and maintenance of social and cultural life, as well as administrative capacities to maintain records and documentation by which social and cultural life is organised. But in demolishing Palestinian homes, it is also destroying family artefacts, heirlooms, personal records, books, photographs and photographic collections that constitute a family’s capacity to reproduce its memories.

Established in 2007 and supported by the Malcolm Robertson Foundation, the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize seeks outstanding poetry from new and emerging writers. This year’s judges, Andy Jackson, Autumn Royal, Elena Gomez and Toby Fitch (who is also Overland’s poetry editor) read nearly 700 entries before selecting a shortlist of eight outstanding works. The judges then chose three unforgettable […]

Established in 2007 and supported by the Malcolm Robertson Foundation, the Overland Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize seeks outstanding original short fiction of up to 3000 words themed loosely around the notion of ‘travel’. This year’s judges, Patrick Lenton, Alice Bishop and Sara Saleh, selected a shortlist of eight pieces from over 500 entries. They then chose a […]

To be a worker and artist instead of a brand means knowing ‘the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art,’ to quote Ursula Le Guin. Maybe no one in recent pop culture history had more clearly known that difference than Sinead O'Connor. She lived it.

Who cares if AI books are reviewed by AI critics? No one is going to force me to engage with any of it; in fact, it will exist only to reinforce the idea that no sort of engagement is required with anything. The machines can go on making all their nowhere plans for nobody, which by contrast will help make me feel like I am comfortably somewhere.

Our community is one of action and activism, informed by histories and imaginings of Jewish and other resistance. In our anticolonial work, we are explicitly anti-Zionist and work for a free Palestine. We take on this work not to centre or salvage Judaism and Jewishness, but to oppose settler colonialism in all its forms, and to acknowledge the specific and necessary role of Jewish anti-Zionists in opposing violence done in our names. 

Established in 2007, The Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize for new and emerging poets is supported by the Malcolm Robertson Foundation. Entrants must have no more than one collection of poems published under their own name. This year, the major prize is $6000, and second and third prizes are $2000 and $1000 respectively. All three […]