Office happenings

2017 has been quite a year; we’ve published some extraordinary work and seen some important wins. Unfortunately we’re also finishing the year with a government addicted to money and human rights abuses, and so let us keep fighting and writing, next year and beyond.

Overland will be on holiday from 2pm Friday 22 December, and back in the office Monday 8 January.

The magazine will begin publishing online, and considering pitches and pieces, from Monday 15 January.

Many thanks

Many thanks to all our readers, contributors, submitters, volunteers and interns throughout the past year. 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 yesterday; 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 (or maybe even a gift subscription!), just in time for some holiday reading.

Our summer issue

Overland 229 is a special bumper summer read that examines the aftermath of being charged with terrorism, playing the same computer game for 25 years, the legacy of Paradise Lost, the censorship of suicide, sexism in the arts and Australia’s custodial culture.

The edition also contains provocative short stories by  CR McKeogh, SJ Finn and Alice Melike Ülgezer, fourteen pages of poetry – from Michael Farrell, Jonno Revanche, Stuart Barnes, Jessica L Wilkinson, Leif Mahoney, Aidan Coleman, Fiona Wright, Nicholas Powell and Ali Jane Smith – the winners of the 2017 Fair Australia Prize, and a special ‘History of unions’ concertina from cartoonist extraordinaire Sam Wallman that you can place anywhere around your home or office.

The other phenomenal artwork in the edition comes from guest artist Laura Wills, and Overland’s resident designer Brent Stegeman.

While the whole issue is not live on the site just yet, you can read all the fiction, Natalie Cromb’s essay on the ongoing removal of Aboriginal children, and both the essays that won this year’s Fair Australia Prize, Michael Dulaney’s ‘Beyond the bridge to nowhere’, and Julian Bull’s ‘Aussie Albert’:

Alice Springs, 28 September 1958: Albert Namatjira, first Australia’s first citizen, enjoying a quiet drink with his mates down at the local. That’s Albert on the left of the photo, hand in pocket standing alone appearing bemused – the man whom fellow painter Charles Blackman said had the saddest eyes he’d ever seen – looking through the crowded room into the distance. For over a year now Albert has been permitted to slip into the front bar for a coldie or two, but his wife Rubina, also a citizen – First Australia’s second citizen – can’t because she’s a woman, and his five grown-up sons, Enos, Oscar, Ewald, Keith and Maurice, can’t because they’re still wards under the protectorate of the Northern Territory government. It shouldn’t matter though, there are plenty of chaps to chat to here on this spring afternoon, including the couple of blokes from Sydney who have come up to the Alice to do a story on him for the newspaper down there. Albert’s back in the news, though since meeting his Queen Elizabeth a few years back his huge popularity amongst Australians hasn’t waned. Now that he’s been summoned to appear on 6 October – in just over a week’s time – to defend charges arising out of supplying alcohol to his cousin Henoch Raberaba, who as a ward also can’t have a drink with him in the bar today, the newspaper’s editor has deemed him worthy of another feature article. It’s kind of funny then, or so the journalist and his photographer mate may think, to take Albert to the pub as part of their shoot.

As one satisfied subscriber commented on social media this morning after receiving their copy, ‘What a stunning issue of @OverlandJournal’. We concur. Flick through the rest of our summer issue or investigate subscriptions, which start from $45.

Overland readers survey

Overland readers, we want your feedback! By which we mean, please take our readers survey!

Over the last few years, the magazine has expanded its circulation considerably. But if we’re to keep growing, we need to know more about our new and old readers: what you like, what you don’t like, and what you want changed.

If you read Overland, or have contributed pieces to the print or online magazines, we want you to take part. The survey will take about five to ten minutes. All participants go into the draw to win a lifetime subscription. More than that, the answers will help us make a better magazine. We hope you can spare a few minutes. Simply follow this link.

Summer writerly opportunities

New writers, we’re hungry for 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 4 February. See the details for the special fiction issue.

Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers (Poetry)

In 2018, the prize will be awarded to the best poem (up to 88 lines 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 writing residency at the University of Melbourne. Visit the prize page for details.

In solidarity, so long, proshchay,
take care, wadaeaan, all the best, adiaŭo,
shalom, see you next year!