Published in Overland Issue 215 Winter 2014 · Writing / Reading Fancy cuts: an introduction Jennifer Mills There has, in recent years, been a push to rescue various ‘lost’ writers from obscurity. And yet the short story is a literary form deeply embedded in its time. Much of the energy that has sustained Overland throughout the years derives from its contemporaneity – its commitment to the urgent, emerging or marginalised voices of its day. For Overland’s diamond jubilee, I wanted to acknowledge the incredible legacy of writing that sixty years of short stories represents but also continue a tradition of keeping our eyes on the present day, and facing the future – a future which demands fresh imaginative reach. A ‘fancy cut’ is a non-traditional way of shaping a diamond, allowing the cutter to follow the outline the rough stone suggests, or to carve a pattern of their own liking. In 2014, Overland has commissioned four contemporary writers to contribute a short story that responds in some way to a piece of fiction from our sixty years of archives. In shaping their responses, we have asked these writers to take any facet they wish – voice, character, setting, a moment in time – and make it their own. The second of these Fancy Cuts is from Tara Cartland, who won the inaugural Overland Victoria University Short Story Prize in 2012. Cartland’s story ‘Nativity’ began with Katharine Susannah Prichard’s story ‘Josephina Anna Maria’, first published in Overland in June 1958. Prichard’s story is republished at overland.org.au. Jennifer Mills Jennifer Mills was Overland fiction editor between 2012 and 2018. Her latest novel, The Airways, is out through Picador. More by Jennifer Mills › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 5 February 202417 February 2024 · Writing Here and now: our call for justice and liberation Tzedek Collective 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. 1 2 November 202327 November 2023 · Solidarity Open letter: Statement of solidarity with Palestine and call to action from the University of Melbourne’s staff, students, and alumni UniMelb for Palestine Action Group We, the students, staff, and alumni who make up the community at The University of Melbourne, reiterate the NTEU University of Melbourne Branch’s Palestine solidarity statement. We implore The University of Melbourne to stand on the right side of history by condemning Israel’s genocidal attack against the people of Palestine.
