Overland literary journal

(Overdue) Notes from the Sydney Writersʼ Festival

I have, in the last couple of years, had the opportunity to meet several of my heroes. No-one you might call a megastar, but then, who would want to meet a megastar? They are terrifyingly hot and often 20 million times the size of the sun. (Oh dear.) Unfortunately for me, I have never quite managed to remain cool during these encounters. (Stop. It. Now.)

There was the time I accused Shaun Micallef of plagiarising (myself. Oh dear me.) and the time I inadvertently gave Reif Larsen the impression I was about to ask him out. (ʻI was just wondering if ...ʼ) Never before have I seen such terror in a manʼs eyes. Oh and when I had the opportunity to go hobnob with Ben Naparstek and Steve Toltz, I literally ran away. (Got in car and went to maccas instead, if youʼre interested.) ... read more

Written by Claire Zorn on 16-06-2011, No comments

Antony Loewenstein on boycotts and literary festivals

Passionate and outspoken about Israel/Palestine, among other things, Antony Loewenstein is a freelance independent journalist based in Sydney. Author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution, he is a denizen of the Twittersphere. Antony speaks regularly at literary festivals around the world and his essay ‘Boycotts and Literary Festivals’ is published in the 203 edition of Overland.

What was your pathway to becoming a speaker at literary festivals?

Written by Clare Strahan on 16-06-2011, 4 user comments

At the Sydney Film Festival: Le Quattro Volte

Le Quattro Volte
Director: Michelangelo Frammartino
★★★★★

Le Quattro Volte means ‘the four times’ and refers to four cycles of life: human, animal, vegetable and mineral. The film tells the stories of all four through an old man, his resilient dog, a herd of goats and then, well, trees. This really is a stellar cast. How director Michelangelo Frammartino handled the goats with such skill and narrative effect is a mystery. ... read more

Written by Peter Francis on 15-06-2011, 1 user comment

Speaking rights, hoaxes and straight white men

On Sunday morning, it was revealed that ‘Amina’, a Syrian-American lesbian blogger whose name and face shot around the internet last week after apparently being arrested by authorities, did not exist. She was an elaborately constructed hoax by a married American man named Tom MacMaster. Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that one of the people instrumental in uncovering ‘the man behind the curtain’, a lesbian woman named ‘Paula Brooks’, was also a hoax. ‘She’ was in fact 58-year-old Bill Graber, ‘retired Ohio military man and construction worker’ who used his wife’s ID to edit online lesbian news site Lez Get Real. ... read more

Written by Stephanie Convery on 15-06-2011, 11 user comments

At the Sydney Film Festival: If a Tree Falls

If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front
Directors: Marshall Curry & Sam Cullman
★★★★

The Earth Liberation Front is a loose group of environmentalists variously labelled radical activists and eco-terrorists. The first ELF activity in the United States occurred in the 90s in Eugene, Oregon: a centre for environmental and anarchist activism. The FBI would go on to call them ‘America’s number one domestic terrorism threat’. ... read more

Written by Peter Francis on 13-06-2011, 2 user comments

Osama lives

you cn feel him now:
a small boy
on the riyadh streets
shifting arabia's
bare / cracked childhood feet
in volatile unease
as US army tanks roll by

the bullet blew the flesh
bt he is written in the wind:

osama
osama bin
osama bin laden
osama bin laden lives

Written by Maxine Clarke on 13-06-2011, 1 user comment

Being Kylie Minogue

One night in early Autumn I woke from a dream of wolves, and through a chain of association that the dream provoked in my half-awake state (wolves, a page of A Thousand Plateaus, plurality, identities, time, loss, grief) found myself thinking about Kylie Minogue who I had seen crying on TV the previous night while she was being interviewed by Molly Meldrum.

I share a house with three Kylie devotees so June is shaping up as the Month of Kylie, as she hits the country on her Aphrodite tour. It’s surprising to remember how long Kylie has been around. Impossible Princess, the album that contains the Kylie-standards ‘Breathe’ and ‘Cowboy Style’ was released in 1997, colliding with the death of Diana, and she was already a star then. In fact it’s just over twenty years since Kylie’s first live gig, in Brisbane in 1990. ... read more

Written by Stephen Wright on 10-06-2011, 7 user comments

Announcing the winners of the Meanland blogging competition

We are thrilled to announce the winners today of the 2011 Meanland blogging competition.

At final count, we had over seventy entries and the standard was frankly dismayingly high. In the end we decided that choosing only two was impossible, so we decided to select four excellent bloggers who will each blog once a month for the Meanland project for the rest of this year.

The winning essay-posts will be cross-posted on Spike, Overland and, of course, Meanland over the coming fortnight, so keep an eye out.

And without further ado, here are the winners:

Catherine Moffat

John Weldon

Diane Simonelli

Ali Alizadeh

... read more

Written by Editorial team on 10-06-2011, 3 user comments

Stephanie Holt on football and gender

It’s the Women’s Round and former Meanjin editor and dedicated St Kilda supporter, Stephanie Holt chats with Overland about her gig at The Footy Almanac, the vitality of AFL culture and its mirroring of gender inequality found in society as a whole. Her essay, ‘Football’s Women Problem – Stephanie Holt on sex, lies and the AFL’, is published in Overland’s edition 203. ... read more

Written by Clare Strahan on 10-06-2011, 3 user comments

The best Australian stories

The Best Australian Stories: a ten-year collection Edited and published by Black Inc.

This anthology is touted as the best of the best – culled from the Best Australian Stories annuals of the past decade. It is not clear how they have been selected. The nameless Black Inc. editors of this anthology state simply that their aim was to ‘showcase the vigour and diversity of Australian short fiction’.

There is certainly diversity: thirty-seven stories, from the ridiculous

Written by Carol Middleton on 9-06-2011, 2 user comments

We want to know what you think

Over the last years, we've been experimenting with the format and content of Overland, both online and in print. We think that the innovations have retained Overland's traditional spirit, even as they've taken the journal to new places. But what's more important than what we think is what you think. Which is why we're running a readers survey.

If you can spare ten minutes to answer some questions about the magazine and the website, we'd really appreciate it. It doesn't take long, and you'll go in the draw to win a lifetime subscription and a crate of boutique wine, even as you help us build a better journal. ... read more

Written by Editorial team on 9-06-2011, 2 user comments

Boots full of blood: ‘The Roving Party’ and Cormac McCarthy

Rohan Wilson has won the 2011 Vogel prize for his historical novel The Roving Party. In the story, John Batman, who later founded the settlement that became Melbourne, hires an Aboriginal man called Black Bill, some Dharug trackers and a ragtag, shoeless mob of convict assignees and sets out across Tasmania to track down and kill the ‘witch’ Manalargena. This is set within the context of the Black Line; an 1830s attempt to, if not systematically exterminate, then at least ‘round up’ and exile the Pallawa peoples of Van Diemen’s Land. ... read more

Written by Sarah Drummond on 8-06-2011, 8 user comments

Refugees, abortion debates and Afghan women’s rights: A Human Rights and Arts Film Festival review

Between 26 and 28 May, the Human Rights and Arts Film Festival visited Alice Springs. Over three nights, three feature films and a selection of Australian short films played under the cold open skies at the Olive Pink Botanical Gardens. Having attended a previous HRAFF in Melbourne, I was interested in seeing the shortened travelling version of the festival.

Friday began with three short Australian films: Jacob, The Kings and The Game. The first, Jacob, was one of the best-shot short dramas I’ve seen in a while. Set on a station in Central Australia in the 1940s, it shows the affect of a birth on an Aboriginal stockman and his family, the baby being born white as a result of an alluded rape. Told ‘in language’, the film transports you to that era, exploring the disempowerment Aboriginal woman must have gone through. The second film, The Kings, was a short about two visually blind parents raising a visually blind child, while the third, The Game, was a montage of interviews with African youth in the Western Suburbs of Melbourne talking about racial prejudice and the police. ... read more

Written by Scott Foyster on 7-06-2011, 8 user comments