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James Bradley (the man behind the City of Tongues blog and many fine novels, most recently The Resurrectionist), writing for Australian Literary Review:

Overland founder Stephen Murray-Smith ended the magazine’s association with the Communist Party in 1958, but it remains the most overtly political of the Australian literary magazines […] Perhaps ironically, the result is one of the least doctrinaire and liveliest of the Australian literary magazines. Under editor Jeff Sparrow, Overland has published nonfiction by writers ranging from Christos Tsiolkas to Guy Rundle and Bob Ellis, as well as new fiction by then-unknowns Nam Le and Kalinda Ashton (who is also an associate editor of the magazine). Alongside these it has commissioned essays by the likes of Mark Davis and Germaine Greer, and continues to run an important lecture series and other public events. Yet despite the standard (and indeed stature) of its many contributors, the magazine is distinguished by its deliberately oppositional and punkish edge, qualities that not only give its contributions an urgency more august publications often lack but also a sense of connection with the contemporary incarnations of the radical politics that were its genesis.

But you can’t maintain a punkish edge without cold hard cash: even the Clash signed with EMI. So dig deep, peoples, if you haven’t already.

Jeff Sparrow

Jeff Sparrow is a Walkley Award-winning writer, broadcaster and former editor of Overland.

More by Jeff Sparrow ›

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