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Overland Journal

@overlandjournal.bsky.social
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Overland Journal – radical Australian literature and culture since 1954 linktr.ee/ovrlnd

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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 8h
"Above all, the sum of John Miller's works demonstrates an ethic of love and hope, and a way for us as artists to play a role in political movements." A major examination by Hana Pera Aoake of the oeuvre of Māori photographer John Miller.
overland.org.au
The camera is a patu - Overland literary journal
The camera is indeed Miller's weapon, and his photographs are the evidence necessary for us to grasp if we truly want to understand the nuances of the political and social upheavals je has witnessed i...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
It’s finally here - issue 260. In your mailbox shortly. Limited copies will be available online to purchase in the coming days. Thank you to our subscribers and supporters for their patience while we brought this issue to life 💗
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
“I can think of no better antidote to capitalism than the fruits of one’s labour being eaten by skinks.” A beautiful review/meditation by Edie Mitsuda on Hannah Moloney’s WHY WE GARDEN — generously supported by the @copyright.com.au Cultural Fund. overland.org.au/2026/09/huma...
overland.org.au
Human pursuits: on Hannah Moloney’s Why We Garden - Overland literary journal
It’s this kind of enthusiasm that propels Why We Garden, a book written by an author who really knows plants — not just their names and whether they like full sun or part shade, but intimate details l...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
This is tomorrow night! RSVP for free here: tally.so/r/0Q448N
tally.so
RSVP to Flint & Spark: a night of First Nations Storytelling
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Sam Wallman is back! In this poster, originally commissioned by the Union Cooperative Initiative for the Mayworks Festival in Vancouver, he illustrates a quote on organising praxis by Jane McAlevey.
overland.org.au
The answer is yes - Overland literary journal
"Do you spend most of your day talking to people who don't agree with you? If you're serious about building class politics, the answer is yes." (Jane McAlevey)
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Join us this coming Wednesday the 30th at narrm ngarrgu library for FLINT AND SPARK ⚡️With readings from Laniyuk, Bebe Oliver and Ellen van Neerven, MC’d by our own Evelyn Araluen. 5:30pm - 7pm. RSVP for free here: tally.so/r/0Q448N Presented in partnership with the City of Melbourne.
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
“Reclaiming a “right to the city” necessitates not merely planning inclusion, but a transformation of power and property relations in the city.” Jae Brieffes on the limits of current feminist planning under capitalist urbanism.
overland.org.au
Whose city? A critique of feminist planning under capitalist urbanism - Overland literary journal
Understanding that women face violence in public space as a direct result of poor urban design, the GSUD framework identifies introducing wider footpaths, better street lighting, green spaces with goo...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
"The system is pre-emptive. It kills people now, in anterior time, to cancel out whatever actions they might commit in the future." A searing new comic by Safdar Ahmed on the turning of Gaza into an assassination factory.
overland.org.au
Killer robots - Overland literary journal
To cite the words of a former Israeli intelligence officer, Gaza became an 'assassination factory'. In this sense, AI's true role has been to create a sense of distance from, and provide an alibi for,...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
We are thrilled to announce the winner and runner up of the 2026 Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers! Thank you to our judges, Luke Patterson and Evelyn Araluen, as well as Trinity College for their ongoing sponsorship of this prize. overland.org.au/2026/09/anno...
overland.org.au
Announcing the final results of the 2026 Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers - Overland literary journal
Sponsored by Trinity College at the University of Melbourne and supporters, the Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers, established in 2014, recognises the talent of young Indigenous writers...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
“o unfathomable lack! unbelievable luck … really, you wouldn’t believe me” This Friday we’re breaking the protective glass of the New Gareth Morgan Poem switch to bring you his latest, “having a sweetie”.
overland.org.au
having a sweetie - Overland literary journal
o unfathomable lack! unbelievable luck … really, you wouldn’t believe me my pollen grows in the dark my pollen reeks like bed sheets/br
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
“One old idea, at least, is worth taking forwards if we are to extricate ourselves from hyperpolitics: that there is nothing left to us but to organise and fight.” Ben Brooker on Anton Jäger.
overland.org.au
Surveying the empire of confusion: Anton Jäger’s Hyperpolitics - Overland literary journal
One explanation for the enthusiastic uptake of the book by many on the left is that it answers to a longing for someone to particularise our political moment, one of whose defining features is apparen...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
In the latest in our series of critical reviews supported by the @copyright.com.au's Cultural Fund, Ouyang Yu reviews Isabelle Li’s THE NORTHERN TOMB, a novel in which “the Covid 19 pandemic is presented as a near absence”.
overland.org.au
A tomb in memory of “the tedium of quotidian survival” - Overland literary journal
Told in three voices, The Northern Tomb is an ambitious novel revolving around three main characters and spanning eighty years of Chinese history in all its turmoils from the 1940s to the end of COVID...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
“You keep hugging him. Just like they say to. Even when the air isn’t hardly worth breathing.” Our brand new #fridayfiction is THE OCTOPUS by Patrick Eades.
overland.org.au
The octopus - Overland literary journal
When he is small enough to fit under your chin you squeeze him so tight Daisy tells you to stop or he’ll turn blue. Give him some air, she says, laughing. Let him breathe for God’s sake.
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Join us this coming Wednesday at EWF! What does it mean to report truthfully when the ground keeps shifting beneath us? emergingwritersfestival.org.au/event/indepe...
emergingwritersfestival.org.au
Independent Journalism in Today's Political Climate - Emerging Writers' Festival
Join Antoun Issa, Soaliha Iqbal, and Monique Hurley for a conversation about sustaining critical reporting in hostile conditions.
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Join the waitlist and try to snag a spot at our event with EWF this Sunday! The stories we hold back are often the ones that matter the most. But what happens when the censor lives inside our own heads? emergingwritersfestival.org.au/event/writin...
emergingwritersfestival.org.au
Writing Against Self-Censorship - Emerging Writers' Festival
This workshop invites writers to identify and interrogate the voices--both internal and external--that shape what gets written down, and what stays silent. Through guided exercises and group discussio...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
“For a moment, [the Bridge] carried me from the isolation of grief into the strength of solidarity.” Shamikh Badra reflects on the Sydney Harbour Bridge march one year on, and on how to turn an exceptional moment into a lasting public tradition.
overland.org.au
One year after the Bridge: Palestine, people-power and Australia’s conscience - Overland literary journal
On that day, Palestine stood at the centre of one of Australia’s most recognised landmarks, and a broad and powerful public movement became visible. It was ready to defend Palestinian rights, but also...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
“If there was ever a time to dust off the participatory mechanisms of our universities and bring them back to life, it is now.” David Brophy on the attempt to convene a Convocation for Gaza at the University of Sydney.
overland.org.au
A Convocation for Gaza: decision looms on historic meeting of alumni and academics - Overland literary journal
Convocation is only an advisory body, and holding one will still leave us a long way from the democratic university we need. But at a time like this, we need to make use of any mechanisms we have to c...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Today we are thoroughly honoured to publish the letter that the Hayes family delivered to the Australian government at the gates of Pine Gap on 20 July 2026—demanding land back, closure of the base, compensation for the community and for families in Gaza.
overland.org.au
The Hayes family letter, with introductions by Henry Reynolds and Felicity Hayes - Overland literary journal
The government needs to know that this place is sacred and we want Pine Gap to be closed down. Since the base was built, we’ve been locked out of our own sacred land. We can’t go there with our famili...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
“It is perhaps this potential for creation, for which a phantom pregnancy may serve as a metaphor, which is the _phantom_ of the novel’s title.” Ned Hirst on Angela O’Keeffe’s PHANTOM DAYS and the book as object.
overland.org.au
The book as object: Angela O’Keeffe’s Phantom Days - Overland literary journal
A few years ago, I overheard an antiquarian bookseller tell one of his customers that while he didn’t mind reading, he was really more interested in the “book as object”. I was reminded of this while ...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
“The process of collecting, documenting and storing is an optimistic one. It projects forward, implying a future into which we plant.” From Overland #259, Benjamin Gready on a field trip to Wadi Fukin.
overland.org.au
Fieldwork in the shadow of occupation - Overland literary journal
Wadi Fukin is a small Palestinian village located ten kilometres to the west of Bethlehem. Hemmed in by Israeli settlements, it sits isolated in the valley floor straddling the Green Line (the 1949 Ar...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
“What if the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia was not a cautionary tale, but a preview?” Emir Hodzic on the balkanisation of the West.
overland.org.au
The balkanisation of the West - Overland literary journal
As Yugoslavia disintegrated in a storm of nationalism and genocide, Western leaders watched with a mix of glee, condescension, and horror. Glee at the fall of a socialist federation, condescension tow...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Thank you for your patience as we finalise the distribution of issue 260. We're currently working through adjustments in our new print and distribution process, and we want to let you know the journals will arrive at our office next week, with shipping commencing shortly after.
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
"I am not quite mortal, not quite one of you. I am a foretelling of ruin, a grim reminder to quit smoking, eat your vegetables, be grateful" A fierce entry in the annals of our Friday poetry — HARBINGER by Robin M Eames.
overland.org.au
Harbinger - Overland literary journal
I appear unto the living, the disabled angel of death casting fear into your eyes when you look, & look away. It hurts you to look.
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
“The ‘Billionaire Frontier’ proves that the soil nationalism claims to protect is negotiable when militarised capital arrives.” Victoria Lane on the backlash against Gina Rinehart's Praire hub proposal and the failure of the Australia-Israel parallel.
overland.org.au
The Billionaire Frontier: sovereignty, military myths, and the collapse of the Australia-Israel parallel - Overland literary journal
Two months ago, mining billionaire Gina Rinehart stood before the News Corp National Bush Summit in Townsville and proposed a radical reshaping of northern Queensland's landscape. Her plan was to esta...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
“These words refuse the lie that silence will protect us.” Our penultimate feature unlock from Overland #259 is adapted from Leah Jing McIntosh's Colin Simpson Memorial Keynote, on THE LIMITS OF LANGUAGE.
overland.org.au
The limits of language - Overland literary journal
It is a strange thing, to be a critic in a time when so many things leave you speechless. Amid the rise of fascism, racism, genocide and censorship, I have been wondering about the point of writing wo...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
“Stopless syntax does embody another contemporary feeling: that the end is nigh, and yet it never arrives.” Simon Graham reviews Adam Ouston's single-sentence novel, MINE.
overland.org.au
“Man below, losing hope”: Adam Ouston’s Mine - Overland literary journal
The single-sentence novel is having a moment. In the past three years alone, two Nobels (Fosse, Krasznahorkai) and a Pulitzer (Kraus) have been awarded to authors who have written them. While it might...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
“The lawn is an ontological panopticon, a diorama of class conflict, a site of bourgeois status-panic grafted onto the colonial-capitalist impulse.” This glorious essay from Overland 259 is part of our magazine's ongoing war on lawns:
overland.org.au
Sir, the thorax - Overland literary journal
The inevitable morning, for example. Winter’s stars fi-nally trapped in droplets, their globular prisons beaded at bladepoint on knives of grass, a horrid boogie.
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
“Who is the economy? As far as most novels are concerned, there is no such thing.” The first of two feature unlocks this week from Overland 259 is EIGHT WAYS OF WRITING ABOUT THE ECONOMY by Pierce Wilcox.
overland.org.au
Eight ways of writing about the economy - Overland literary journal
The man walks down the fluorescent-lit corridor to his death. He thinks of his father, telling him what distinguished strength from weakness; his mother, absent behind an ethanol cloud; the congealed ...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
“_Date yourself_, my therapist says. It’s not a sex thing. More a stop dating jerks thing.” Our latest #fridayfiction is ALMOST SEX, a new story by Bec Kavanagh.
overland.org.au
Almost sex - Overland literary journal
I take my body to the movies. I pay for a seat in the back row and feed her popcorn while the opening credits roll. It’s a thriller, one of those recent ones made to look old. I guess at who the kille...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
"The hobbits are not the poor and the oppressed of the world", but theirs is "a world imagined as an act of taking sides against fascism — and it deserves to be recognised as such." David Renton on Tolkien's anti-fascism.
overland.org.au
JRR Tolkien, anti-fascist - Overland literary journal
Eutastrophe is an alternative to the jack-boot and to the cruelty of fascism. It is people of goodwill, agreeing to co-operate, despite that all divides us.It is not the world that most anti-fascists ...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
“How could I have not known this piece of land, this occupied checkpoint, as a part of my geographical sense of Palestine? It was a porous map, in which an expanding hole denied me the right to know it, wholly.” From OVERLAND #259, Shatha Abd El Latif on travelling to Nablus.
overland.org.au
300 seconds or 300 days - Overland literary journal
How could I claim to love my home and not recognise this military zone as part of it? The checkpoint is part of this homeland! All this time I had known a different Palestine. How could I have not kno...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
“This is what happens when governments treat climate change as a construction project instead of a policy failure.” Noa Wynn on how Australia’s sunniest city is quietly running out of water
overland.org.au
Perth's reservoirs are near empty: how Australia's sunniest city is quietly running out of water - Overland literary journal
We have built our cities on the quiet delusion that a turning tap is an infinite resource. We plant green lawns around our houses and water public parks in the middle of summer. As long as the water f...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
“G-D, SLEEP, AND CHAOS is a book about how the light travels if light comes out of nowhere.” Lucy Van reviews Alan Fyfe’s debut poetry collection – part of a series of critical essays generously supported by @copyright.com.au.
overland.org.au
Waiting for the light to hit it just so: Alan Fyfe’s G-d, Sleep, and Chaos - Overland literary journal
G-d, Sleep, and Chaos — Alan Fyfe's debut poetry collection — begins with something. The something calls out. But then the something doesn’t tell. The something remembers something: Egypt. Then the so...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
“There are stories that need to be told and voices that need to be heard about what it’s like to be disabled in Australia in 2026.” Haley Zilberberg reviews the anthology CRIP STORIES
overland.org.au
What Crip Stories tells us about being disabled in 2026 - Overland literary journal
At its core, Crip Stories is a book that says calmy and quietly, “We are here”. It offers insights into disability discrimination in education, employment and the healthcare system, as well as the com...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
"If you are NOT allowed to raise your VOICE above the PAGE then you can’t be properly heard in the STRAITJACKET of language that they insist you WRITE in." Our first print issue unlock for OVERLAND #159 is by πO, on why people hate poetry. overland.org.au/previous-iss...
overland.org.au
Why people hate poetry - Overland literary journal
But then, not all “sonnets” are great either! Lots of people still laugh at Cubism for example, and there is a lot of “bad” examples of it, but “habituation” and “training” changes all that, and admit...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
“Recognising harm is one thing. Changing the conditions that allow it to continue is another.” Shamikh Badra on the government response to the report on Islamophobia by Aftab Malik
overland.org.au
Australia has recognised Islamophobia. But will it provide equal protection? - Overland literary journal
When the racist motive of a crime is not named, part of the experience disappears from the official story. The attack left me anxious. I now think before wearing a keffiyeh in public, not only because...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
For our latest #fridaypoem, editor Elena Gomez has selected an entry by Chinese poet Shen Haobo, translated into English by Liang Yujing.
overland.org.au
他不吃螃蟹 / He doesn’t eat crabs - Overland literary journal
A poem by Shen Haobo, translated from the Chinese by Liang Yujing
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
“This is a book about that generation’s resistance to a capitalist war bequeathed to today’s anti-war generation. Tom Orsag reviews Rowan Cahill’s COLD WAR KID
overland.org.au
Cold War rebel: how the government created its anti-war activists - Overland literary journal
“The only lottery I’ve ever won” quips Rowan Cahill about turning twenty — the date of his birthday being his number in the “lottery of death” or “blood lottery” run by the Australian government for c...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Effective July 1st, we are pleased to announce an increase in contributor rates across all categories, reflecting our ongoing commitment to paying writers and artists fairly for their work.
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
“The figure of the ‘ISIS bride’ therefore reveals more than bad media representation. It exposes the limits of care and recognition under Islamophobia.” Houda Ali on the persistence and effects of a racialised label.
overland.org.au
After the “ISIS bride”: Islamophobia and the limits of care - Overland literary journal
The violence of Islamophobia diminishes the ability of Muslims, as Muslims, to narrate themselves and project themselves into a future. But to insist on complexity is not to evade responsibility. It i...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
“Customers, shareholders and experts agree that Time Buddy™ increases productivity.” From our latest Friday fiction, a brand new story by Matthew Dalla Rosa.
overland.org.au
Time BuddyTM - Overland literary journal
Customers, shareholders and experts agree that Time BuddyTM increases productivity. The Employee feels tremendous pressure to log their time. This pressure builds to the point The Employee stares at t...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
“Part of a healthy civic society is having the ability to choose where we direct our attention. Local news may be where that choice becomes visible again.” Genevieve Siggins on the case for local news in an age of news avoidance.
overland.org.au
The case for local news in an age of news avoidance - Overland literary journal
Revitalising local news could create space for journalists who are genuinely invested in the communities they report on, giving them the time to develop and preserve the Australian voices that might o...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
“History shows that when housing is at risk, communities respond”. Activist and oral historian Hannah Garvan on the past and present of occupations as a tactic in the struggle for housing.
overland.org.au
We met them at the door: occupations in the fight for housing justice - Overland literary journal
History shows that when housing is at risk, communities respond. Whether it is an economic depression, overdevelopment or a housing crisis, moments such as these demonstrate people’s ability to meet h...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
"Who are you anyway but a figure in life who loves literature in all its phases; but not necessarily life in all of hers." Today we remember Barry Dickins by re-publishing WRITING FOR A DYING, a meditation on his career first published in our online magazine in 2015 overland.org.au/2015/11/writ...
overland.org.au
Writing for a dying - Overland literary journal
I have written for my bread and butter (usually margarine!) ever since I failed high school in 1965. I have made both a fortune from it as well as nothing. I have had popular daily or weekly newspaper...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
LAST CHANCE! The 2026 Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers CLOSES TONIGHT 11:59PM! Make sure to get your poetic entries in while you can! Link to submit → overland.submittable.com/submit/24622...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
“PRAISEWORTHY is maybe the first novel to attempt to think about a planet in polycrisis” Giacomo Bianchino on the first global anti-epic. Generously supported by the @copyright.com.au Cultural Fund.
overland.org.au
The toast at the end of time: Alexis Wright’s Praiseworthy as anti-epic - Overland literary journal
Praiseworthy is maybe the first novel in the world which takes all of these pressures completely seriously. It is an attempt to think a planet in “polycrisis”: beset on all sides by exploitation, geno...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
“The state’s media should not turn its back on the people in Kalgoorlie dying waiting for houses that are empty.” Chelsea Daniel on the challenges of reporting on, and by, Western Australia.
overland.org.au
Can WA report on WA? - Overland literary journal
Independent media outlets holding institutions to account have been gaining prominence over the past year, with organisations like Deepcut, Ette Media and Lamestream speaking to a frustrated media aud...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
The 2026 Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers is CLOSING THIS FRIDAY 11:59PM! Make sure to get your poetic entries in, and spread the word! Link to submit → overland.submittable.com/submit/24622...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
“It’s theft, and more than that. Class warfare of a particular character.” Joshua Mostafa on the first strike in the Australian software industry and the struggle against the privatisation of the general intellect.
overland.org.au
The general intellect on the picket line: after the first strike in the Australian software industry - Overland literary journal
It would suit the interests of our would-be techno-fedual overlords for each of us to simply fret, individually and impotently, about the situation, while the economic foundations of our lives are hol...
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Overland Journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Here at Overland we are staunch fans of Elese Dowden's work. Here's her new poem, BIG DADDY
overland.org.au
big daddy - Overland literary journal
it is no longer enough / to hold love in the body without moving it outwards / towards the world or the big daddy man the ‘climate’ / who does not fit on a screen or in the palm of a hand: / refuses t...
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