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.
Claire Varley is a Melbourne-based writer and community development worker. Her debut novel The Bit in Between was published in 2015 by Pan Macmillan and she is currently editing a new novel for release early 2018. Her writing has appeared in places such as The Big Issue Fiction Edition 2016, Kill Your Darlings, Victorian Writer and Page Seventeen>/em>.