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.
Barry Leonard Dickins is a writer and artist born deliberately in Reservoir in order to be disbelieved. He teaches Creative Writing in many schools including Victoria University and state schools through out Australia; mostly to Grade Fours. He loves everything in life even death. He writes regularly for The Age and is always working on a new stage play. At present he is completing a commissioned stage play for Currency Press in Sydney to do with the mystery surrounding the disappearance of heiress Juanita Nielson on 4 July 1975. Barry first contributed to Overland magazine in 1970 and is thrilled to be back in print here where he started to write.
