Published 28 June 201613 July 2016 · Writing / Activities / Announcement Writers, we want your fiction about women! Editorial team Overland is looking for fiction for its next special issue, The idea of women, to be guest edited by Mandy Beaumont and Craig Bolland and published in October. About ‘The idea of women’ edition: ‘Since I had been born a man, I craved women constantly, the lower the better. And yet women, good women, frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep … So I continued to struggle with women, with the idea of women.’ – Charles Bukowski For this special online fiction edition of Overland, the editors are looking for stories that explore – broadly – how women are experienced as ideas rather than realities.* Women as fantastic beasts. Women as projections. Women not as they actually are, but as they are imagined and fantasised about; as they are limited and defined by, or viewed through, ideas of femininity – from the empowered to the absurd. *A theme inspired by close readings of the works of Charles Bukowski. About the guest editors Mandy Beaumont teaches Creative Writing at Griffith University. Most recently Mandy was shortlisted for the Newcastle Short Story Award and won the MOTH International Short Story Award. She is a Fresh Ground Resident at the JWCOCA and a member of the advisory committee for Arts Queensland Literature Grants. mandybeaumont.com Craig Bolland is a lecturer in Creative Writing and Literary studies at the Queensland University of Technology. He is an award winning playwright and short film maker, and the author of the novel I Knit Water (UQP). craig.com.au Submission details Online contributors for this edition will be paid $120 per story. Entries for the special issue close 11.59pm, Wednesday 31 August 2016. ‘The idea of women’ issue will be available online in early October. Submit your story Under the ‘For online’ category on the fiction submissions page. You may also be interested in reading one of the previous special issues edited by Ben Walter, Oliver Driscoll, SJ Finn, Emily Laidlaw, Miranda Camboni, Kate Goldsworthy, Khalid Warsame or Rachel Hennessy. Editorial team More by Editorial team › 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 10 March 202610 March 2026 · Writing The role of the committed writer in an unfree world André Dao No, the committed writer is a movement writer. I mean that the committed writer knows that they know very little, and that the way to remedy that ignorance is through solidarity with people in struggle. 1 1 December 20251 December 2025 · Writing With respect to the poor essay Jonno Revanche Style is now a feature that we surrender to a digital pattern recognition machine, which attempts to replicate our own but often falls short, feeling convincing enough but too superficial in its noticing to get to the heart of human concerns.
