Overland Journal
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Overland Journal – radical Australian literature and culture since 1954 linktr.ee/ovrlnd
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.
"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.
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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“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.
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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“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.
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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“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.
“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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“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:
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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“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.
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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“_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.
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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"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.
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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“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.
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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“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
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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“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.
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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“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
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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"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...
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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“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
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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For our latest #fridaypoem, editor Elena Gomez has selected an entry by Chinese poet Shen Haobo, translated into English by Liang Yujing.
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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“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
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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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.
“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.
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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“Customers, shareholders and experts agree that Time Buddy™ increases productivity.” From our latest Friday fiction, a brand new story by Matthew Dalla Rosa.
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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“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.
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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“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.
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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"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...
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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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...
“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.
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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“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.
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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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...
“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.
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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Here at Overland we are staunch fans of Elese Dowden's work. Here's her new poem, BIG DADDY
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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“This is what happens when environmentalism is done to Indigenous peoples rather than with them.” Sara Relli on the long tail of the campaigns, by Brigitte Bardot and others, to end sealing in the Arctic.
“We are the guardians of where we live”: the other face of the campaign to end sealing - Overland literary journal
The knowledge is indeed in the landscape — and Inuit communities continue to defend it, despite decades of erasure, exclusion, and demonisation. Recognising this knowledge is the first step in reimagi...
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