Blog

Michael Brull & Dr Tad Tietze speak

Healthy debate is a wonderful thing and Michael Brull has gone head-to-head with Dr Tad Tietze to debate the idea: Political Islam is not a friend of the Left, published in Overland's edition 203.

Mike is on Twitter, has a featured blog at Independent Australian Jewish Voices and is involved in Stop the Intervention Collective Sydney (STICS). Dr Tad is a public hospital psychiatrist who works in Sydney. He co-runs the blog Left Flank and is very active on Twitter. Here, we dig a little deeper into their points of view and learn more about their individual journeys to writing and the Left. ... read more

Written by Clare Strahan on 7-06-2011, 1 user comment

Benjamin Law speaks

Benjamin Law is a freelance writer living in Brisbane. His debut book The Family Law was published by Black Inc. Books in 2010 and Matchbox Pictures have bought the rights to make it into a TV series. Benjamin writes for Frankie magazine, contributes to such notables as The Big Issue, The Monthly, Cleo, Crikey, New Matilda, Kill Your Darlings and ABC’s The Drum Unleashed and his essays have appeared in The Best Australian Essays. Benjamin chats to Clare Strahan about his essay in Overland 203, 'Only disconnect', the travails of being overseas during a natural disaster, the blessedness of Twitter, accepting what you can't change and the potentially hostile territory he's soon to explore researching for his second nonfiction book, looking at queer people and communities throughout Asia. ... read more

Written by Clare Strahan on 6-06-2011, 1 user comment

Overland 203 out now

Overland 203 is hitting mailboxes now. The mailboxes of subscribers, that is – and so if you’re not a subscriber, there’s never been a better time to join up. It’s only $54 ($40 if you′ve a concession) and it guarantees you twelve months of great reading.

Over the next days, we’ll be publishing all kinds of supplementary material here on the Overland blog. Here’s the first installment.

Professor Phillip Deery is the author of Labour in Conflict: the 1949 Coal Strike and many essays on the Cold War in publications including American Communist History, Cold War History, Intelligence and National Security, Journal of Cold War Studies and Labour History. He is in the process of co-authoring a new book on Cold War espionage with Mario Del Pero due to be published by Feltrinelli Press in 2011. Phillip has taken up a New York University fellowship to work on a political biography of Howard Fast and takes time from his busy schedule to share some insights about his article Remembering ASIO featured in edition 203 of Overland. ... read more

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

Cambodia’s curse

Cambodia's curse_coverReview: Cambodia’s curse: the modern history of a troubled land
Joel Brinkley
Black Inc.

‘Be careful because Cambodia is the most dangerous place you will ever visit. You will fall in love with it, and eventually it will break your heart.’ So said Joseph Mussomeli, who was the US ambassador to Cambodia in 2005. Mussomeli, a hard-worn diplomat who’d served in Cairo, Manila, Colombo and Manama in Bahrain, would warn his American visitors that Cambodia was unlike any country they’d ever been to. Devastated by years of war and genocide, this small country locked between Thailand and Vietnam remains to this day in a horrible impasse. ... read more

Written by Roselina Press on 3-06-2011, 5 user comments

Thanks for 50 years of prohibition …

This year marks 50 years of drug prohibition. 50 years since the United Nations adopted the first international treaty to prohibit certain drugs. And, in the spirit of cordiality and a large amount of tongue and cheek, there are those who would like to send their thanks.

From Igor, Russian heroin trader.

From Azlan, Taliban Leader.

There are some, with just as much cordiality but no tongue and cheek, asking – it would seem – trickier questions:

... read more

Written by SJ Finn on 2-06-2011, No comments

Child’s play

(or Strategies for buying an hour and a half of writing time from your eight-month-old)

Turn on the laptop, crank up the gas heater and choose one of the following:

1. Sit her naked on a plastic sheet with a tub of cottage cheese
2. Sit her naked on a plastic sheet with an entire loaf of bread
3. Sit her naked on a plastic sheet with a pot full of lukewarm spaghetti
4. Sit her naked on a plastic sheet with an entire copy of the Age newspaper
5. Sit her naked on a plastic sheet with a pot full of lukewarm rice
6. Sit her naked on a plastic sheet with a pot full of lukewarm baked beans
7. Sit her naked on a plastic sheet with a tub of grated cheese
8. Sit her naked on a plastic sheet with a pot full of mashed potato
9. Sit her naked on a plastic sheet
10. Sit her naked ... read more

Written by Maxine Clarke on 2-06-2011, 2 user comments

Ali Alizadeh’s ‘Ashes in the Air’

Cover_Ashes in the airAnger and frustration shades many of the poems in Ali Alizadeh’s new collection published by UQP. If you learned about social injustice and cultural displacement by emigrating from Tehran to the Gold Coast as a teenager, you too would probably be angry and frustrated at your observations of racism, religious and cultural hypocrisy, and conservatism at two supposedly opposing ends of the political spectrum. But these poems aren’t strictly political or necessarily activist in essence, they also dwell partly in the realm of confessionalism – offering personality and warmth to the politically engaged subject matter. ... read more

Written by Tara Mokhtari on 1-06-2011, 1 user comment