Office happenings

2016 has been a helluva year, and now it’s time for some rest. Overland will be on holiday from 5pm Wednesday 20 December, and back in the office Monday 9 January.

The magazine will begin publishing online, and considering pitches and pieces, from Monday 16 January.

Many thanks

Many thanks to all our readers, contributors, submitters, volunteers and interns throughout 2016. We’ve said it before and now we’ll say it again: Overland would be impossible without you!

Thanks, too, to everyone who took out a subscription during Subscriberthon. The new issue started hitting mailboxes last Friday; for those still waiting (looking at you New Zealand and Western Australia), the magazine should arrive any moment now.

If you’re not currently a subscriber, you can buy our hot-off-the-press summer issue, or take out a subscription, just in time for some holiday reading.

Our summer issue

Overland 225 features essays examining Australia’s Far Right, literary depictions of radical politics and what they do to literary heroines, the ethics of sex with robots, form versus content versus misogyny, the history of  Australia’s worker-led anti-conscription movement, cultural appropriation, and a survey of the state of the contemporary working class.

There are phenomenal short stories by Tony Birch and Alex Philps, a seventeen-poet collaboration in honour of Gig Ryan’s birthday featuring Michael Farrell, Ouyang Yu, Louis Armand, Bonny Cassidy, Kate Lilley, John Hand, Toby Fitch, Tracy Ryan, John Kinsella, Ella O’Keefe, Kate Fagan, Aden Rolfe, Melinda Bufton, Nguyen Tien Hoang, Lisa Gorton, Liam Ferney and Ann Vickery, plus original poetry by Charlotte Guest, Claire Nashar and Marty Hiatt.

With artwork by Sam Wallman and Brent Stegeman.

Not all of the new issue is live on the site just yet, but you can read Jason Wilson’s investigation of Trumpism, masculinity and white freedoms in America:

The year 2016 was barely three days old when Ammon Bundy gave it a face. That face was entering middle age and slightly rounded at the cheeks. It was white, of course, with blue eyes beginning to wrinkle at the corners.

It was bearded, too, and topped off with a dark brown cowboy hat, in a studied evocation of the long-gone western frontier.

You can also read all of the winners from the 2016 Fair Australia Prize and the winners of this year’s Story Wine Prize – Cameron Weston, Johanna Bell and Zoe Bradley, and accompanying judges’ report.

Summer writerly opportunities

Seeking writing from women of colour

Overland has a proud history of publishing underrepresented writers and promoting manifold voices. We are especially keen on receiving submissions from women writers of colour – fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Pitch and submit here!

New writers, we want your fiction!

Overland is seeking fiction from new and emerging writers for a special online edition to be guest edited by an emerging editor. Submissions close 11.59pm, Sunday 5 February. See the details for the special fiction issue.

Be our guest fiction editor

An opportunity exists for an emerging editor to work on one of Overland’s online fiction editions, to be published in June 2017. Submissions close 11.59pm, Sunday 5 February. Read the details.

Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers (Short Fiction)

In 2017, the prize will be awarded to the best short story (up to 3000 words in length) by an Indigenous writer who is 30 years or younger. First place is a $5000 prize, publication in Overland’s print magazine, and a three-month writer’s residency. Visit the prize page for details.

In solidarity, so long, adieu, take care, adios,
all the best, see you next year!