In this highly anticipated new issue, we encounter brilliant examples of what writing can do in a hypernormal time – whether that's Benjamin Gready on the absurdity of fieldwork on land under active occupation or Zahid Gamieldien's short story about a dancing rat who finds itself enmeshed in systems too shadowy to be true. But, as with the emotional cycles of resistance, hope and snark are features too. Dan Hogan considers the lawn as a class obsession, and π.ο. asks a question: why people hate poetry? We also read about a rakhasa family who passes on wisdom to their young kin, a story by Shefali Mathew. And you’ll find new poetry by Eli McLean, Fiona Hile and Sol Chan, among others, as well as a comic by Safdar Ahmed, plus heaps more. Co-editors Evelyn Araluen and Jonathan Dunk write in the editorial, "Writing always matters, but it matters most directly in the face of this kind of thuggish assault on language, our first and last commons. We can’t let the bastards have it.”
Erik Eklund is Professor of Australian history at Federation University. Since 2008 he has lived and worked in the Latrobe Valley apart apart from a period between 2015 and 2016 when he completed a term as the Keith Cameron Chair in Australian History at University College Dublin. He has also held appointments at the University of Newcastle, Monash University, Georgetown University in Washington DC, and at the ANU as a Visiting Fellow. He was the joint winner of the Labour History Prize for the best article in that journal in the period 2012 to 2013, and was awarded the New South Wales Premier’s Prize for Regional and Community History in 2003, for his 2002 book Steel Town. In 2021 he was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's History Awards.
