Overland 254 is the first in a set of four special editions dedicated to commemorating 70 years of Overland. This issue also launches a new design and format by Common Room Editions, inspired by Overland’s trove of radical literature spanning from 1954 to today. Andrew Brooks and Astrid Lorange consider the asymmetrical responses to two events: the wearing of keffiyehs by three cast members during the Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Anton Chekov’s The Seagull, and, on the same day in the US, the shooting of three Palestinian men wearing keffiyehs. Jeff Sparrow uncovers the Sydney Herald’s legacy of Terra Nullius, and Daniel Lopez writes on Marx, Meredith and the festival as an inversion of modern life.
Amanda Niehaus is a biologist and writer living in Brisbane. She weaves science into her essays, stories, and poems, which have appeared in Creative Nonfiction, AGNI, NOON Annual, Griffith Review, and Overland, among others. Her story ‘Breeding Season’ won the 2017 VU Short Story Prize. Her first novel, The Breeding Season, will be published by Allen & Unwin in September 2019.
