Overland literary journal > Articles by: Jacinda Woodhead

Author archives

Jacinda Woodhead

Jacinda Woodhead is a former editor of Overland and current law student.

Articles by Jacinda Woodhead:

27 June 202211 August 2022

Not without a fight

Jacinda Woodhead

It is easy to despair when we see how we far we are from reproductive justice, but we must take heart in the mass demonstrations against the overturning of Roe. The numbers, the anger, the persistence, and the recognition that we only get change by organising.

13 October 202013 November 2020

When someone great is gone: remembering Ania Walwicz

Jacinda Woodhead, Clare Strahan and Benjamin Laird

Ania Walwicz taught us that art is central to being human. She recognised that to be an artist is also to be a teacher. She wanted to create a community and a movement, and when it suited, that community was also her court.

Published in Overland Issue 237 Summer 2019

Introducing Overland 237

Jacinda Woodhead

Last night I attended a talk by former editor Jeff Sparrow, about his new book on fascism and the Christchurch massacre. ‘What can we do about the intense alienation and isolation that many people seem to feel today?’ someone in the audience asked.

13 November 201920 December 2019

A letter from our editors, old and new

Jacinda Woodhead, Editorial team, Evelyn Araluen and Jonathan Dunk

I remember mistakes over the years – the errors that made it into print, despite the concerted effort (sorry Fredric Jameson et al) – disagreements about whether a work is finished (who even really knows when a work is finished!) … Mostly, I remember the thrill of collaborating with writers and editors and our volunteer readers on thousands of ideas and essays and arguments and editions and special issues.

Published in Overland Issue 236 Spring 2019

Introducing Overland 236

Jacinda Woodhead

Since learning that we are to lose $80,000 a year in funding from 2021, we’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on contemporary literary culture and its public perception. To put this figure in perspective, $80,000 is about three editions of the print magazine each year or three roles at the magazine (we only have four positions, or the equivalent of 2.2 full-time staff).

16 August 20196 November 2019

An era of throwaway arts

Jacinda Woodhead

On the same day that the Morrison government announced they were giving $500 million to defence so they can buy bigger guns (part of a $3 billion increase to the department), I learned that Overland was not invited to renew its four-year funding from federal arts body the Australia Council.

Published in Overland Issue 235 Winter 2019

Introducing Overland 235

Jacinda Woodhead

It has been a privilege to edit a magazine that emerged from different left traditions and continues to find new ways to foster radical spaces and thought. For me, it has always been the making of the magazines that I loved (18 print editions since 2015, and countless online editions and pieces) and the ephemerality of each edition, a collaboration shaped by all the ideas and forces around it.

Published in Overland Issue 234 Autumn 2019

Introducing Overland 234

Jacinda Woodhead

As I write this, we are still in mourning from a right-wing terror attack on Christchurch that took many lives, and damaged us all. Two weeks ago today, the true and brutal nature of fascism yet again showed its hideous visage.

Published in Overland Issue 233 Summer 2018

Introducing Overland 233

Jacinda Woodhead

Last month, I attended a symposium in Newport about memorialisation and the thirty-five bridge workers who died when the West Gate Bridge collapsed in 1970. The ‘past is never over’, observed visiting Canadian academic Tara Goldstein, because we are always reinterpreting history and, therefore, must always interrogate ‘veracity’. The royal commission into the accident held unions and workers partly accountable; as one of the speakers argued, in the lead-up to the fifty-year anniversary of the disaster, this is a narrative that must be corrected.

Published in Overland Issue 232 Spring 2018

Introducing Overland 232

Jacinda Woodhead

Once upon a time, there was a first sentence. I wasn’t sure what to write after that.’ There isn’t a contributor here (or perhaps anywhere) who wouldn’t concur with Mel Campbell’s sentiment on beginnings. All the columnists in this edition muse on startings and endings. How do we begin anything, asks Campbell. What if endings are no longer quite so … final, asks Giovanni Tiso.

Published in Overland Issue 231 Winter 2018

Introducing winter Overland

Jacinda Woodhead

The neoliberal university – largely privatised, steered by market logic, forcing academic inquiry into vocational strictures – looms large in the Australian imagination and in reality; as documented in our online magazine over the past few months, class sizes swell alongside student fees, academic workloads and vice-chancellor salaries.

Published in Overland Issue Seventy years of the Nakba

Seventy years of the Nakba

Jacinda Woodhead, Sian Vate and Rasheeda Wilson

As Zoe Samudzi pointed out this morning, it is impossible to see the images coming out of occupied Palestine and to not think of Apartheid South Africa; of the brutality of a government that attempts to displace, extinguish and erase all existence of a people who complicate a state narrative.

Published in Overland Issue 230 Autumn 2018

Editorial

Jacinda Woodhead

This edition is off to print at the same time as Indigenous activists are establishing Camp Freedom on the Gold Coast, a protest against the stolen wealth that props up yet another Australian Commonwealth Games spectacle. Camp Freedom has echoes of Melbourne’s 2006 Camp Sovereignty, a powerful demonstration against colonial authority, which Tony Birch documents within these pages. Such occupations, Birch writes, present ‘a spectre of repressed Indigenous histories’ that ‘stake a claim’ on past and present.

Published in Overland Issue 229 Summer 2017

Editorial

Jacinda Woodhead

This edition has many unusual aspects – Mel Campbell’s desire to understand her 25-year obsession with a low-fi computer game, Michalia Arathimos’s reflection on the 10-year anniversary of her partner being charged with terrorism, Alice Melike Ülgezer’s fictional meditation on the lives of refugees in Turkey, Allan Drew’s examination of the persisting influence of Paradise Lost, first published 350 years ago.

Published in Overland Issue 228 Spring 2017

The anniversary of October 1917

Jacinda Woodhead

The first of the 1917 revolutions began – unexpectedly – on International Women’s Day, when Petrograd’s factories were overflowing with speeches on the state of women’s lives. ‘As the meetings ended,’ China Miéville writes in his book October, which documents the revolution and what it aspired to, ‘women began to pour from the factories onto the streets, shouting for bread.’

Published in Overland Issue 227 Winter 2017

Australia’s modern-day mask

Jacinda Woodhead

Colonialism is generally considered something that we are past or post, as historical or theoretical. Cultural theorist Stuart Hall described colonialism as the ‘outer face’ of Western modernity from 1492 on, its features expansion, conquest and hegemonisation. Australia’s modern-day mask looks an awful lot like colonialism, many of the pieces in this edition observe.

Published in Overland Issue 226 Autumn 2017

Editorial #226

Jacinda Woodhead

Too often, our response to uncertainty and impending apocalypse is that we must save this world – a world of yearning for counterfeit yesterdays and rehabilitated tomorrows. Or worse, for things to continue as they are, as we have come to believe they have always been; a world we are told is ‘already great’, ad nauseam.

Published in Overland Issue 225 Summer 2016

Overland 225: Summer 2016

Jacinda Woodhead

Though not yet president, Donald Trump is monopolising political discussion already. But by focusing on this individual as the embodiment of all that ails this era, we could miss the polarisation that’s occurring across the world. The past few years have seen a revivification of the Far Right. Marine Le Pen’s National Front has 40% of the vote in parts of France; in Australia, the most recent election created four One Nation senators, and, as Vashti Kenway notes in her article on Hansonism, many of their obsessions are indistinguishable from the LNP’s.

Published in Overland Issue 224 Spring 2016

Victoria University Short Story Prize: judges’ report

Jennifer Mills, Alison Whan and Jacinda Woodhead

Submissions for the 2016 Overland Victoria University Short Story Prize were assessed blind. Five hundred entries were equally divided between the judges, who arrived at a longlist of thirty stories. This longlist was then reduced to a strong shortlist of fourteen, and finally to two runners-up and a winner.

Published in Overland Issue 224 Spring 2016

Overland’s 224th issue

Jacinda Woodhead

As this edition of Overland goes to print, refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru have been protesting for 180 consecutive days about their 1153 days in detention. Twelve hundred adults, children and babies rammed into (repurposed) containers or suffocative tents in a camp where water is scarce and food rotten, where rape and sexual abuse is an everyday occurrence, where escape is sought through self-harm or suicide. Misery and pain goes unheeded; broken bones, infections, diseases and ailments are treated with, at best, Panadol.

18 August 20162 September 2016

Read this!

Carina Garland, Sam Wallman and Jacinda Woodhead

Still mulling over ideas for your Fair Australia Prize entry? Judges Carina Garland, Sam Wallman and Jacinda Woodhead have come up with a reading/watching list that may help.

Published in Overland Issue 223 Winter 2016

Editorial

Jacinda Woodhead

What is hope and why do humans need it? In this issue, in her inimitable style, Alison Croggon ruminates on this idea. Is hope ‘a desperate mirage to combat despair, an expression of our inability to comprehend the reality of our own mortality’, or ‘perhaps, this light, falling now, on that tree?’

19 May 201612 September 2019

The fight for funding

Jacinda Woodhead

Literature is especially endangered right now: the arts have been underfunded by successive governments, and literature has always received, in the words of Stephen Murray-Smith, the least ‘superphosphate’.

6 May 201612 February 2019

We, a nation of torturers

Jacinda Woodhead

But Australia has a long history of ugly racism – against Indigenous Australians, against Chinese, Afghans, Greeks, Italians, Vietnamese, Sudanese – it’s something the political class has fed and bred for many decades. Richard Marles may claim that ‘offshore processing has been the single most important policy that any Australian government has made’, but Labor was very proud of the White Australia policy as well.

Published in Overland Issue 222 Autumn 2016

Editorial

Jacinda Woodhead

With the release of ‘Formation’ and Beyoncé’s performance at this year’s Super Bowl, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) campaign pierced living rooms across the United States. Complete with Black Panther salute and iconography, accompanied by a film clip with a hurricane-drenched landscape and graffiti reading ‘stop shooting us’, a movement that had been demonised by the mainstream media and the right was given a heroic performance in what is, arguably, capitalism’s ultimate spectacle.

Published in Overland Issue 221 Summer 2015

Victoria University Short Story Prize: judges’ report

Natalie Kon-yu, Nam Le and Jacinda Woodhead

Submissions for the 2015 Overland Victoria University Short Story Prize were assessed blind. More than five hundred entries were equally divided between the judges, who returned after several weeks with a longlist of twenty-eight stories. This longlist was then reduced, over a number of rereads and discussions, to a shortlist of twelve diverse and ambitious stories, and finally to two runners-up and a winning story.

Published in Overland Issue 221 Summer 2015

Overland 221

Jacinda Woodhead

The end of 2015 is an unusual time politically – a period when the International Brigades are invoked as justification to bomb Syria, even as transgender rights are finally central to debates about identity. Are we on the precipice of transformation or in the eye of the storm? These are the questions elicited by the writings in this edition, such as in Sam Wallman’s reportage about refuge and its refusal in Europe, which calls to mind Dorothy Hewett’s ‘Exodus’.

11 December 201522 March 2016

On New Matilda and independent left-wing media

Jacinda Woodhead

Left-wing publications often punch above their weight. They publish on big topics – corruption and hypocrisy, war and oppression – and often have even greater agendas; at the very least, they want people to be less comfortable with the status quo. Because of their democratic desires, they’re often a space where many different writers – people who are publishing their first piece or don’t consider themselves writers at all – can write and be heard.

19 October 201512 February 2019

The real racket

Jacinda Woodhead

We live in an age of paradoxes: a time when Australia tries to conceal its mistreatment of refugees through various nefarious methods – for example, criminalising the disclosure of child abuse in the Nauruan detention system – even as it trumpets its concern for violence against women, which is, according to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, ‘unAustralian’. Yet, in the case of ‘Abyan’ – the refugee on Nauru flown to Australia for a termination following a rape on the island and then deported before the procedure could even occur – violence is the direct result of Australian government policy.

Published in Overland Issue 220 Spring 2015

Editorial

Jacinda Woodhead

‘The global capitalist system is approaching an apocalyptic zero-point,’ Slavoj Žižek observes in Living in the End Times. For Žižek, the four riders are climate change, biogenetics, system imbalances (from intellectual property to water as a resource) and ever-increasing social divisions. Perhaps belief in the apocalypse is not only for fundamentalists: there are many moments one feels these might be the final days of capitalism. There are only so many billions of people it can exhaust, so many planets it can devour.

Published in Overland Issue 218 Autumn 2015

Editorial

Jacinda Woodhead

At times, being a woman in Australia is easier than it used to be. Women can go to university, have careers and are part of the public discourse; some women have economic independence and some can marry their girlfriends (overseas, anyway).

21 November 201420 March 2016

Serial without grain

Jacinda Woodhead

What is the point of retelling a true story? It’s a question I keep returning to when listening to Serial, the new WBEZ/This American Life podcast, which is being downloaded 1.2 million times per episode and for which there’s now a meet-up group, and a bunch of pop culture sites with podcasts dissecting the podcast.

Published in Overland Issue 216 Spring 2014

Jellyfish

Jacinda Woodhead

Kandinski orbited through the kitchen, past the water cooler, past the toilet block, past Yang’s desk on the right – the carefully timed three-minute lap of the office’s gravitational path. He awarded himself another lap, a bonus for four cramped hours at his desk.

1 August 20148 August 2014

Notes from the Pay the Writers meeting

Jacinda Woodhead

As anyone who’s ever been involved in a campaign knows, it’s hard to predict at the outset what shape it will take, what things it will have the power to change or how many people are going to turn up to meetings, particularly the first one.

Published in Overland Issue 215 Winter 2014

Hard for the money

Jacinda Woodhead

Even in times of economic boom, writers found it difficult to get paid for their labour – despite the ASA establishing industry rates for non-staff writers. That being said, it’s clear that the situation is now particularly dire. The ASA and the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, the two organisations representing writers and their professional interests in Australia, suggest ‘minimum’ rates: they recommend, respectively, $892 and $925 per 1000 words, for both print and online publication.

9 May 201412 February 2019

Tell him he’s dreaming: Geoff Shaw and abortion

Jacinda Woodhead

When, during his run for office in 2010, a local paper asked Geoff Shaw to reveal his ‘secrets’ – things people in the area might be surprised to learn about him – he replied, ‘I’m a third Dan blackbelt in karate … I play footy for the Frankston District Tiger Sharks. I play the bagpipes and the drums. I love Phil Collins. I’ve seen him live.’ And so on.

Published in Overland Issue 214 Autumn 2014

Editorial

Jacinda Woodhead

Writers, said Overland’s founding editor Stephen Murray-Smith in one of our early issues, record the storms of history as they rage through the lives and minds of people. They must respond to the storm from whatever direction it is blowing. You cannot face one and turn your back on another.

8 October 201315 October 2013

Against forgetting

Jacinda Woodhead

The responsibility for tracking down a family of five who got on a boat in July and hasn’t been heard from since has, to my surprise, fallen to me. This is because I live with someone who is Tamil and know somebody who works with refugees. Those who might have more information, who may be familiar with the missing, are, typically in a position too perilous to make inquiries that place them in government spotlights. More generally, most of us don’t where to start looking for a boat lost on a vast ocean.

16 July 201312 February 2019

‘Yes, you lied to me all these years’

Jacinda Woodhead

It felt like everybody tuned in to the internet to hear the verdict of a trial about a boy stalked across gated streets, and shot in the rain outside his father’s house. The murder happened hundreds of thousands of kilometres away from where I live, in a state to which I’ve never been, in a country that attempts to shape the world in its image.

Published in Overland Issue 211 Winter 2013

All those women

Jacinda Woodhead

The fight over abortion in Australia’s Deep North.

7 June 201323 August 2018

Writers and repression in Sri Lanka

Jacinda Woodhead

Listening to 3RRR’s Aural text on Wednesday, I heard alicia sometimes mention the four-week residency opportunity in Sri Lanka that Writers Victoria is currently promoting. ‘Why not take a month off to write?’ is how it’s being sold. We hear a lot about Sri Lanka, the island slightly smaller in landmass than Tasmania that sits to the west of Malaysia, though mostly what we hear is that it’s a source of The Boats.

8 April 20132 June 2013

When is a dongle just a dongle?

Jacinda Woodhead

There are a lot of things I don’t get about Twitter and/or Facebook: hashtags (seriously, who uses them?), profile photos, how righteous a tweet can make us feel even as it fills us with self-doubt. There’s no tone and little room for nuance or context in these spaces, no grace for momentary lapses or mistakes, and outrages frequently ensue.

5 March 201326 February 2019

The war in Queensland

Jacinda Woodhead

When Victorian senator John Madigan trained his raygun-of-righteousness on the rate of ‘gender-selective’ abortion in Australia last week, the response was, largely, bewilderment: there is no evidence that the practice even occurs in Australia.

18 January 2013

The terrorism lurk

Jacinda Woodhead

Besides, who can say with certainty that downloading academic papers has not crossed that terrorist line?

26 October 201226 October 2012

‘My vagina, my rules’

Jacinda Woodhead

Abortion and women’s reproductive rights are significant issues for me. But they are also a microcosm of society more broadly, and the continued attempts to limit women’s choices, whether they be economic or educational or about being able to raise a child alone or to not raise one right now.

28 September 201228 September 2012

Reclaiming the night

Jacinda Woodhead

It is depressing that only a couple of weeks after SlutWalk (but years after the Reclaim the Night marches and many waves of feminism), we still have to reiterate that women should be able to walk the streets at night.

11 September 201212 September 2012

The Church’s new flavour

Jacinda Woodhead

Sydney Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen made a truly revealing comment on ABC’s Q&A last night. It wasn’t when he came out in support of Jim Wallace (and echoed the logic of Todd Akin), stating that a lot of people have told him that homosexuality is bad for your health, and that there’s a lot of literature to support the claim.

22 August 201224 August 2012

‘Prison is Russia in miniature’

Jacinda Woodhead

Until recently, when someone mentioned modern-day Russia, I’d think of those photographs by Anna Skladmann of Russia’s wealthy children. Well those, and the fact that there have been so many journalists murdered in Russia since the early 90s that the list has its own Wikipedia page.

31 July 201231 July 2012

Issue 207.5: winter fiction

Jacinda Woodhead

Introducing the first in an online fiction series: 207.5: winter fiction.

13 July 201213 July 2012

The unequivocal line between fact and fiction

Jacinda Woodhead

After a ‘Politics and literature’ panel at the NT Writers Festival, I joined a conversation with fellow panellist Robin Hemley, editor of the Iowa Review, and an audience member who was also a journalist. The conversation was about Mike Daisey’s now-infamous This American Life episode on Foxconn workers in China.

29 May 201229 May 2012

After El Salvador

Jacinda Woodhead

‘Enhanced interrogation techniques’: to distinguish between the way the CIA used to interrogate, and the new, improved way.

3 May 20123 May 2012

Where are the shows about neurotic Black women?

Jacinda Woodhead

If you’ve spent time flitting across the internet over the past few weeks, chances are you’ve encountered the Lena Dunham/Girls backlash, or ‘backlash to the backlash’, even if you’ve never watched the show (which is likely in Australia, because it hasn’t even screened here yet.)

19 April 201219 April 2012

This project is made possible with a grant from Amazon.com

Jacinda Woodhead

A few weeks ago, the embattled Planned Parenthood in Dallas, Texas refused a $500,000 dollar donation from Tucker Max. The Dallas clinic is one of only a handful left in North Texas, after Planned Parenthood lost $73 million dollars in funding in 2011, in an area with one of the highest uninsured populations in America – 25%.

Published in Overland Issue 206 Autumn 2012

Editorial

Jacinda Woodhead

‘Dear capitalism,’ began one of the handmade, cardboard signs floating above the sea of occupiers in Toronto, ‘it’s not you it’s us.’ Then, scrawled below: ‘Just kidding, it’s you.’ Over the past year and a half, events have highlighted a growing suspicion that capitalism is becoming a threat to anyone not a stockbroker, politician or CEO. This widespread movement had made itself felt in Tunisia, Egypt, Greece and Spain, in the crumbling of Wall Street, and in the people’s occupations transforming public spaces into tent cities.

30 January 201227 March 2012

Overland Occupy – an online special

Jacinda Woodhead

The Occupy movement that spread across the globe in 2011 saw a revival of extra-parliamentary politics and sweeping debates about the idea of democracy. It was a movement ignited by the Arab Spring, but one that spread all over the world, including to Australia. Overland put a callout for an Occupy issue last year. Since […]

Published in Overland Issue Online Occupy Issue

Editorial

Jacinda Woodhead

OVERLAND Occupy special online supplement published 30 January 2012 The Occupy movement that spread across the globe in 2011 saw a revival of extra-parliamentary politics and sweeping debates about the idea of democracy. It was a movement ignited by the Arab Spring, but one that spread all over the world, including to Australia. Overland put […]

Published in Overland Issue Online Occupy Issue

Issue Occupy

Jacinda Woodhead

Occupy special published 27 January 2012 In the wake of economic crises, political atomisation and an increase in militarised policing, what does the Occupy movement mean? Contents Jacinda Woodhead – Editorial Occupy – Features Sean Scalmer – ‘The world of all of us’ Occupying history Elizabeth Humphrys – From Global Justice to Occupy Everywhere The […]

26 January 201225 July 2012

Occupied

Jacinda Woodhead

Today is the 40th anniversary of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.

13 January 201220 August 2013

Ron Paul: next president or protofascist?

Jacinda Woodhead

There’s a joke on the new tumblr, Shit Liberals Say To Radicals, that goes, ‘Sure, Obama’s not perfect, but consider the alternative.’ Followed by the fine print, ‘I did, it’s called socialism.’

22 October 201125 July 2012

Occupy Melbourne: eviction

Jacinda Woodhead

As one of the judges for the Lord Mayor’s Creative Writing Awards for this year, I’ve been surprised in the past 24 hours to hear myself referred to as a ‘professional protester’ by the Lord Mayor – an ‘arrogant liar’ who had had their ‘little self-indulgent moment in the sunshine’ and ‘caused at least $15,000 damage’ to City Square. Because I have been active in Occupy Melbourne.

Published in Overland Issue 204 Spring 2011

How to tell if you are the red herring

Jacinda Woodhead

1st. Your shoes don’t fit. They’re either too big, or too small; either way, even if you wore them once, you will wear them no more. What kind of protagonist outgrows their own feet? 2nd. You’re stuck in a rut. Every day, through a camera lens, appears the same routine: you get up, shower, eat two eggs, skim a whole paper. Drive to a generic government high-rise building, park, sign-in, disappear. Here’s the rub: you don’t remember how you got this job or what it is you do. You do remember you despise eggs.

28 September 20119 August 2016

Shame.

Jacinda Woodhead

But I reckon the worstest shame is yours – Kevin Gilbert Last week actor David Gulpilil was sentenced to twelve months prison (seven months suspended) for assaulting his wife.

19 September 201125 July 2012

Justice is AWOL

Jacinda Woodhead

There’s a flood of concern about asylum seekers lately, and ‘oceans of cant and hypocrisy’ to run alongside it. The attention isn’t unexpected, because such unease tends to come in waves, but this one feels – potentially – tidal.

3 August 201126 March 2012

The Hicks petition

Jacinda Woodhead

A fortnight ago, the Australian government announced its intention to seize funds that David Hicks has received from the sale of his memoir about his time imprisoned in Guantanamo. The court case is today. Many Australians are stunned by the decision. To those people, the Hicks case represents a foul miscarriage of justice during the […]

7 May 201126 March 2012

The only track on my iPod*

Jacinda Woodhead

I cannot stop listening to this version of ‘Black Stacey’. Saul Williams’s new studio album, Volcanic Sunlight, is rumoured to be available any day now. *Could be a slight exaggeration.

31 March 201126 March 2012

LOL Bolt and free speech

Jacinda Woodhead

‘The Holocaust started with words.’ Perhaps Ron Merkel, lead counsel for the nine Aborigines suing Andrew Bolt under the Racial Discrimination Act, would have been better to use a more local example. The policy that allowed the government to ‘assume full control and custody of the child of any aborigine’ (the Aborigines Protection Amending Act […]

24 March 201110 June 2016

Meanland: Marshall McLuhan is stalking me from beyond the grave

Jacinda Woodhead

Not a fan of media theorist Marshall ‘the medium is the message’ McLuhan? Okay, I don’t go in for the technological determinism either, but you can’t deny that the man was uncannily prescient when it came to predicting how our culture would develop – a ‘global village’, electric technology ‘reshaping and restructuring patterns of social […]

16 March 201126 March 2012

NFZs and other benevolent interventions

Jacinda Woodhead

There is a fissure in the Left at present; in Australia, it’s playing out on the pages of Crikey, liberal blog Larvatus Prodeo and Benjamin Solah’s Blood and Barricades. The Left is divided between western intervention in the Libyan uprisings, or not. About a UN-endorsed no-fly zone over Libya, or not. About whether such interventions […]

8 March 201126 March 2012

International Women’s Day: thoughts from the frontline

Jacinda Woodhead

I’m a woman; here are some things I’m thinking about today: 1. Mary Poppins and that feminist sub-plot: 2. The war being waged on women and their reproductive rights (which, in many countries, like the vote, were won long ago): • In ‘Lucky girl’, Bridget Potter recounts what she went through to get an […]

4 March 201126 March 2012

Islamophobia revives anti-Semitism

Jacinda Woodhead

Progressive Jewish Australians, such as academic Ned Curthoys and journalist Antony Loewenstein, both published in Overland, along with Michael Brull, one of Overland’s regular bloggers, have written a statement appealing to Australia’s major political parties to publicly and unequivocally denounce Islamophobia: As progressive Jewish Australians we are deeply disturbed by the recent outbreak of politically […]

2 March 201126 March 2012

Meanland: In the future, they’ll be called ‘book deletings’

Jacinda Woodhead

HarperCollins is committed to the library channel. We believe this change balances the value libraries get from our titles with the need to protect our authors and ensure a presence in public libraries and the communities they serve for years to come. Remember the library card inside the front cover (sometimes the back) that used […]

21 February 201126 March 2012

Meanland: On participatory revolution

Jacinda Woodhead

Last week media theorist and writer Jay Rosen coined a new genre; ‘Twitter Can’t Topple Dictators’, it’s called. The genre takes some knowns: • Since the invention of social media there have been uprisings and revolutions: Iran, Moldova, Tunisia, Egypt, and more • Social media helps ‘sex up’ the reporting of these situations through its […]

7 February 201126 March 2012

Re Readings, Bookish and other people who love ebooks

Jacinda Woodhead

Without a doubt, the greatest thing about ebooks is their convenience. If it’s 2am and you must read Anna Krien’s Into the Woods because an unexpected need to understand Tasmania’s environmental politics arises, in this day and age, you should be able to buy that book (in much the same way as you could find […]

4 February 201126 March 2012

The proof is in the chalk

Jacinda Woodhead

There’s this: And then there’s this: Spot the difference. I’m not saying Glenn Beck’s finally taken the irreversible plunge from histrionic travesty and crocodile tears into an oubliette of his own consciousness, but I suspect we’re all kind of thinking it.

28 January 201126 March 2012

‘So what are the differences between Tunisia and Egypt?’

Jacinda Woodhead

For those following events in Egypt, this al-Jazeera interview with the US State Department’s PJ Crowley is essential viewing. I’ve taken the liberty of transcribing some of the highlights: AJ: ‘But we’re not talking in general terms here. Egypt is not letting its people protest peacefully. It’s deploying the full ranks of its US-backed $1.3 […]

7 January 201126 March 2012

I’m not saying Glenn Milne’s a liar…

Jacinda Woodhead

Glenn Milne, regularly published pontificating about his numerous anonymous sources, lowered the bar of journalistic standards yet again yesterday when he filed An ALP insider’s open letter to Julia Gillard at ABC’s Drum. The piece consists of an introduction by Milne, followed by an unsigned open letter to Julia Gillard from an anonymous Labor party […]

22 December 201022 August 2012

Supporting Assange ≠ condoning rape.

Jacinda Woodhead

Let me begin with my position: I have no opinion on the allegations regarding Julian Assange. I do believe rape is unconditionally wrong. But what we are talking about in the Assange case are allegations, with the associated presumption of innocence. This is further complicated, however, as rape allegations are so rarely taken seriously by […]

21 December 201026 March 2012

The world according to Meanland: the top ten things we covered this year (in no particular order)

Jacinda Woodhead

Do you recall when Meanjin quarterly and Overland magazine announced (see A joint communique from somewhere in Meanland) their 2010 collaboration, Meanland or ‘Reading in a time of change’? Back then they promised: This joint project aims to create a constructive dialogue on how we, and future generations, will read. It will explore the challenges […]

Published in Overland Issue 201 Summer 2010

Issue 201

Jacinda Woodhead

Contents Regulars Jacinda Woodhead − Editorial Correspondence Meanland: Marty Hiatt − The crowd is our domain Essays Jeff Sparrow − The banality of goodism Katherine Wilson − The rhythm of engagement Robert Phiddian − Bruce Petty drawing money Jane Gleeson-White − Haunted tales Julie Stephens − The industrialised breast Myke Bartlett − Podcasting as publishing […]

Published in Overland Issue 201 Summer 2010

Editorial

Jacinda Woodhead

My first year at Overland has been an eye-opening entree into the politics and practice of publishing, writing and public debate in Australia – and in 2010, there has been much to debate.

15 November 201015 November 2010

Meanland: Abandoning print

Jacinda Woodhead

Peter Craven made a grave prognosis in his recent defence of the cultural worth of Meanjin: ‘If Meanjin is taken online, it will cease effectively to exist.’ On Thursday on Drum Tim Dunlop countered with: ‘The sooner magazines like Meanjin engage with the realities of online reading – and pray their financiers give them enough […]

5 November 201026 March 2012

Meanland: You will read ebooks. Maybe. One day.

Jacinda Woodhead

Ever since I read Jacob Lambert’s piece at The Millions last week, The Paper-Reader’s Dilemma, I’ve been thinking about the possibility of a casual proliferation in electronic reading. How the transition might overtake us without our permission, without, in fact, us even realising. In his piece about admitting digital change, Lambert wrote: I might say […]

15 October 201015 October 2010

Meanland: Publish Your Self

Jacinda Woodhead

Last night I had the fortune to hear writer Simmone Howell talk about her novels, writing processes and her brief spell as a publisher. Vandal Press, co-founded by Howell during her days in RMIT’s Professional Writing and Editing course, ran from the late 90s to 2002. Howell described scribbling short stories in one class, working […]

12 October 201026 March 2011

Meanland: These people have something to tell you

Jacinda Woodhead

You know how you can spend hours drowning in YouTube clips of people hugging sea lions, animals behaving in endearing animal-like (occasionally very unsettling human-like) ways and outlandish songs – and then you glance outside and nine hours have gone by? To cut a long lesson short: killing time is not all YouTube is for. […]

8 October 2010

The best thing on the internet by far

Jacinda Woodhead

Without a doubt the best discovery I have made on the internet of late is Gogol Bordello.* Here they are with ‘Immigraniada’: Oh, and look, here they are again, ‘When universes collide’: How ‘bout you? Got any Best of the Internet to share? Videos, critiques, music, blogs, other hidden jewels, they’re all welcome, just leave […]

5 October 201026 March 2011

Meanland: On ‘anonymous’ sources

Jacinda Woodhead

‘[W]hat bothers me,’ wrote Christian Kerr in last week’s Australian in regards to the outing of Grog’s Gamut author, Greg Jericho, ‘is that someone seriously expected they could stay anonymous online in this day and age.’ Clearly, Kerr reads a different internet to the average reader. Or there’s a mysterious social order he’s aware of […]

23 September 201026 March 2011

Meanland: Putting the community back in culture (and not a moment too soon)

Jacinda Woodhead

The last few Meanland posts have focused on the nature of copyright and how it works and affects reading, writing and publishing in our new settlements on the digital frontier. Many people feel a distinct sense of impending doom, as though creative and financial control have been wrested from the hands of writers, artists and […]

16 September 201026 March 2011

Meanland: Regarding the very modern ebook machine thing

Jacinda Woodhead

At the conclusion of his column in the July/August issue of The Believer, Nick Hornby – a popular novelist with an aptitude for imparting his reading habits – promised: ‘In next month’s exciting episode, I will describe an attempt, not yet begun, to read Our Mutual Friend on a very modern ebook machine thing. It’s […]

Published in Overland Issue Print Issue 200 Spring 2010

Hip hop in the Wild West

Jacinda Woodhead

I am late as I reach the sunken brick building housing the Hip-hop Academy. It is a sunny winter’s day and the Maribyrnong River flashes, rocking in time with the tide, out back of the Footscray Community Arts Centre. A clean-shaven, long-limbed man in black pants, Run DMC T-shirt and hi-top sneakers greets me. I recognise Aamer Rahman; he’s 27 but could pass for an adolescent.

27 August 201028 August 2010

Overland editors speak out

Jacinda Woodhead

The 200th issue of Overland has arrived! Well, in the office, at least. You, dear reader, can buy it tomorrow at ‘Magazine’, a free Overland session at the Melbourne Writers Festival. It promises to be a scintillating morning filled with interviews, conversations and special guest writers with monikers like Alison Croggon, Maria Tumarkin, Kalinda Ashton […]

18 August 201019 August 2010

Meanland – ‘No thanks, I’ve seen an old issue at the library’: on the responsibility of the reader for the decline of publishing

Jacinda Woodhead

So you, the reader, want to save independent publishing in Australia? Go forth and buy a book. Be daring: buy an armful. The truly intrepid might add a subscription, or several, to one of Australia’s exceptional literary journals – a commitment to the health of the Australian literary scene, if you will. This isn’t to […]

4 August 2010

Remembering Tony Abbott

Jacinda Woodhead

GetUp! has a new ad about Tony Abbott and his archaism:

29 July 2010

Thinking about democracy

Jacinda Woodhead

It is odd, how we think of democracy these days – as something ordinary, inherent to the West, something to strive for yet something taken for granted, also. It is a concept that has plagued the politically vexed mind since time immemorial, well, at least since our ancient forebears. Aristotle envisioned it, Plato feared it […]

29 July 201026 March 2011

The democratisation of publishing (and a bit of Clay Shirky for good measure)

Jacinda Woodhead

A brandspanking new Meanland post: The idea that the printing press democratised reading, writing and ideas is widely embraced. This is not to suggest it was – or remains in its internet incarnation – politically progressive or, indeed, revolutionary. Matthew Battles reminds us: The printing press never only produced the kind of deep reading we […]

22 July 201026 March 2011

Meanland extract – Amazon and that old fudging figures manoeuvre

Jacinda Woodhead

Unless you slept through yesterday (or for some incomprehensible reason went offline), you probably heard how Amazon won the book wars, summed up so succinctly in this New York Times headline: E-Books Top Hardcovers at Amazon: Monday was a day for the history books — if those will even exist in the future. Amazon.com, one […]

21 July 201021 July 2010

On Manning, Lamo, WikiLeaks, Greenwald, new media and old journalism

Jacinda Woodhead

I have an article up at Drum about all of the above: How has the online temperament of news changed journalism? In Katrina Fox’s article on objectivity, transparency and advocacy in journalism, “What’s your bias?”, Marcus O’Donnell, lecturer in journalism, explains: [O]bjectivity was a trust mechanism we relied on in media that didn’t do links. […]

16 July 201016 July 2010

A response to harvest

Jacinda Woodhead

My curiosity piqued by a question beneath a review on our blog of the latest harvest, I hurried home to read its editorial. And read its editorial I did – with a burgeoning sense of unease. The editorial responded to Ted Genoways’ article in Mother Jones earlier this year, ‘The death of fiction?’ Genoways argued […]

12 July 201013 July 2010

Finding Clarke and Dawe

Jacinda Woodhead

This Monday morning, I’ve decided to share my growing appreciation of John Clarke and Bryan Dawe: On asylum seekers Gillard’s first interview as PM John Howard and the politics of fear

8 July 201026 March 2011

Meanland extract – At the mercy of our instruments

Jacinda Woodhead

A writer needs their tools. Chisel Quill Ink Parchment Chalk Pencil Paper Crayon Biro Fountain pen Notepad Typewriter Word Processor ThinkPad Personal Computer Macbook iPhone iPad Tablet What do all these tools have in common? They help us make permanent that thing that makes us human: language. Language marshalled into journals, books, literary fiction, non-fiction, […]

1 July 201026 March 2011

Meanland extract – On Wholphin, and other things McSweeney

Jacinda Woodhead

I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but journals are no longer confined to the printed periodical. Shocking, yet true. Even in traditional publishing spheres, content production is being approached in pioneering ways. The publishing house that immediately comes to mind – and I swear I’m not a McSweeney’s fanatic – is, well, McSweeney’s. McSweeeny’s publish […]

24 June 201024 June 2010

The incalculable cultural significance of The Library

Jacinda Woodhead

Library memories When I think back over my childhood, and how I spent time, I remember libraries. For a long time I lived in a country town, and during school holidays, the wait between the return of the mobile library seemed endless. Then it would return, I’d read the books in a couple of days, […]

24 June 20101 July 2010

Et tu, Gillard?

Jacinda Woodhead

Overnight the face of contemporary Australian politics – that lacklustre, bureaucratic, increasingly-resembling-a-trainwreck Rudd – was met with a leadership challenge. This comes on the back of a downward plummet in the polls [debatable] and numerous backflips on the ETS, refugees, Afghanistan and recent confrontations over the RSPT – ‘that great, big fat tax’ the mining […]

17 June 201019 June 2010

Meanland extract – The great paywall of Murdoch

Jacinda Woodhead

Murdoch wants to put our news behind a paywall, beginning with The Times and The Sunday Times, via a new payment model supposed to kick in in the very near future. Doubtless this is something he’s been planning since his first forays into the internet – like the purchase of MySpace – proved financially fruitless. […]

3 June 20103 June 2010

Israel, film festivals and the BDS

Jacinda Woodhead

I have an article up at Drum about the Melbourne International Film Festival and their cultural partner, the state of Israel. It begins: The Melbourne International Film Festival is receiving Liberty Victoria’s free speech award, the Voltaire award, for its “refusal to buckle in the face of intense pressure from a foreign government and a […]

3 June 2010

Meanland extract – The iPad: tool of revolution or contrivance of capitalism?

Jacinda Woodhead

It’s already a revolution and it’s only just begun. We’ve all heard the grandiose claims: iPad sales hit 2 million in less than two months; the iPad can be used as a language interface for dolphins; the iPad will save newspapers, magazines, books, the print industry in general; the iPad is a revolution in reading. […]

27 May 201026 March 2011

Meanland extract – What is it that makes the web so amazing?

Jacinda Woodhead

‘Fess up: who remembers a time when there was no internet? Once upon a time, if a child, student, writer or reader wanted to know something, they would have to march off to the library* – a day’s hike to the great metropolis on the horizon, for some – and physically track down obscure and […]

26 May 201026 March 2011

Meanland extract – Poetry, gaming, science and more: reading in a time of technology

Jacinda Woodhead

Heading to the @wheelercentre for @Mean_land Reading in a Time of Technology. Should be interesting.less than a minute ago via TweetieSuzanneSteinbrucknerOfficialSuze Apologies to anyone unable to attend last night’s second official Meanland event at The Wheeler Centre, because it was a fantastic adventure. Not only was it riveting and engaging, it was positively electrifying; every […]

19 May 2010

What your atheism costs you

Jacinda Woodhead

Suddenly the world is awash in burqa suspicion and vitriol. In the past fortnight, headlines have been dominated by bans and proposed bans in Belgium, France and Denmark (home to only three women who wear the burqa), to our own shores, and the boorish postulating of Cory Bernardi: In my mind, the burka has no […]

13 May 201026 March 2011

Meanland extract – There are some people not on Twitter (a post for the modern-day luddite)

Jacinda Woodhead

Facebook is all the people you go to school with. Twitter is all the people you wish you went to school with. So said some incisive, possibly adolescent, tweeter last week. I joined Twitter last July and, as of this morning, have 1165 tweets. Is that a lot? Almost certainly, yes, but I think the […]

7 May 201012 May 2010

On Deveny’s dismissal: you’ve tapped into the wrong outrage

Jacinda Woodhead

Let’s be honest now: is there anyone who truly believes Catherine Deveny was advocating for or supporting paedophilia? The only crimes we can charge her with are bad taste and an inability to judge public reaction, hardly hanging offences. What other commentators have failed to grasp about the whole debacle are the sinister implications of […]

6 May 2010

Meanland extract – An argument for long form

Jacinda Woodhead

Long form: long-form journalism, long form online; you may have heard the term bandied about but a definition will prove elusive. ‘Long form’ makes me think of p-books1. In the same way we have e-books and p-books, we now have the short essay, the blog post and lately, the long-form essay. The fact that we […]

109

30 April 2010

When the revolution comes

Jacinda Woodhead

When the revolution comes, it will more than likely be on a Monday. But we’ll need the weekend to prepare. And a soundtrack. Here are some suggestions; feel free to add your own. When the revolution comes – The Last Poets Jailbreak – Yothu Yindi (We don’t need this) Fascist groove thang – Heaven 17 And […]

29 April 201026 March 2011

Meanland extract: Numbers, numbers and more numbers – online stats, blogging stats, twitter stats, reading stats, etcetera

Jacinda Woodhead

Although we may not always recognise our bondage, we live, in modern times, under a tyranny of numbers – (paraphrasing) Nicholas Eberstadt Numbers are appealing. They equate to fact and accuracy; they help us to interpret the world and its workings. We can dispute the significance of numbers but we can’t dispute they exist, nor […]

25 April 20101 May 2010

Sick of arguing with white dudes on the Internet

Jacinda Woodhead

What can you expect from a couple of musicians – albeit, ‘well-schooled, culture-crossing MCs drop[ping] nuggets of sharp social commentary’ – with a self-described style of ‘deconstructionist’, who cite Edward Said and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak as their influences? If you were thinking: possibly a critique of race, class, ethnicity and pop culture framed through a […]

22 April 20101 May 2010

Meanland extract – So you’re writing a blog post?

Jacinda Woodhead

Writing for the Internet is not like writing a novel. Seriously, they’re galaxies apart. Writing an essay and writing a blog post aren’t galaxies apart; more like the distance between the nearest open cluster of stars and me. Clearly, I’m referring to non-fiction here, rather than fiction or poetry or experimental writing. I’m not talking […]

15 April 201012 May 2010

Meanland extract – The Google Reader will creep up and steal all your spare reading/writing time in the blink of an eye

Jacinda Woodhead

Incredibly (given how much I time I devote to talking about it), I am a recent convert to the whole Google Reader thing (three weeks and counting), and would possibly have never stumbled upon the technology if a fellow blogger had not made a seemingly innocent remark (thank you, Joshua Mostafa). The Google Reader fetish […]

8 April 201012 May 2010

Meanland extract – You are not reading enough

Jacinda Woodhead

Reading anxiety (different to the semiotic anxiety of reading that involves wresting with signs, decoding and privilege) has me in its ice-cold clutches of late. I find that I am breaking out in feelings of inadequacy and time-negligence while I play Words with friends on my iPhone or spend a day experimenting in the kitchen […]

31 March 201012 May 2010

Meanland extract – The lowdown on the eReader

Jacinda Woodhead

Roughly 5 million eReaders were sold around the world in 2009. For the uninitiated, the world of the eReader can be positively perplexing, brimming with assumed knowledge. The Kindle is possibly the most recognised reader, with the much talked about but as yet unreleased iPad a close second. Then again, a quick Google search reveals […]

30 March 201012 May 2010

On the [il]legality of drone attacks

Jacinda Woodhead

The Lede blog in the New York Times today has a post by Robert Mackey, ‘Drone Strikes Are Legal, U.S. Official Says’. Highly recommend reading. I’ve embedded a video from the post in which Harold Hongju Koh, the US State Department’s top lawyer, defends the ‘legitimacy’ of drone attacks and targeted assassinations. As Mackey points […]

24 March 201024 March 2010

Meanland extract – SXSW: forecasting how we will read, write and create

Jacinda Woodhead

‘It puts you in the position of a journalist, in a way’, said Margaret Atwood late last year when asked how the Internet has changed her relationship to her readers. ‘You become the journalist of yourself. Which is really weird.’ Margaret Atwood has not only enthusiastically embraced life online, but has also gone one step […]

16 March 201012 May 2010

The Monday review – all out of words

Jacinda Woodhead

Sometimes you have those days where thought is drowned out by all the other noise and you’re simply moving in circles. So I’ll let these writers use their words to say everything better. 1. ‘In creeps political conservatism’ by Marieke Hardy And they put it out there, they set it out amongst us and let […]

11 March 201012 May 2010

105 000 tattoos

Jacinda Woodhead

While we’re on politics and art and setting things on fire, Iraqi American artist Wafaa Bilal is trying to grapple with the enormity of the death toll in Iraq. In this video, courtesy of Democracy Now, he discusses his latest project, …and Counting – a 24-hour live tattooing performance. He also talks about his previous […]

8 March 201012 May 2010

The Monday review – write what you think when you think about Afghanistan

Jacinda Woodhead

I’ve had this idea about writing lately that just won’t be stilled. Not wholly my idea (as if they exist) and it’s not limited to, though this review focuses on, writing. The idea goes like this: perhaps there is something unhealthy about the state of writing today in Melbourne, in Australia, around the world. Too […]

1 March 201012 May 2010

The Monday review – people are animals

Jacinda Woodhead

Well, we’ve all thought it; here are some links exploring the idea. 1. On separating neurological pathways so mammals don’t feel pain when they’re factory farmed. 2. On rights and self-regulation: Apple learning from the factory farming industry. At least eleven 15 year-old children were discovered to be working last year in three factories that […]

22 February 201012 May 2010

The Monday review – the simple art of murder

Jacinda Woodhead

Some Monday afternoon links, skirting around the edges of murder, which may have earlier escaped your attention. 1. On Mossad and murder – ‘Meir Dagan: the mastermind behind Mossad’s secret war’. 2. On Australian soldiers and their use of drones in Afghanistan – ‘The law of instant death’. [There exist] big flaws in the training […]

18 February 201012 May 2010

Convicted on fanaticism

Jacinda Woodhead

A citizen’s response Fifty-seven years ago a young Milo Radulovich was dismissed from the US Air Force, deemed a ‘security risk’. His crime? A ‘close and continuing’ relationship with a father from Yugoslavia, and a sister who picketed a hotel that wouldn’t have Paul Robeson as a guest. Radulovich didn’t take McCarthy’s word for his […]

12 February 201012 May 2010

Aboriginal Control of Aboriginal Affairs

Jacinda Woodhead

Saturday 13 February National Day of Action: Stop the NT intervention 2 pm MAYSAR Gertrude St Fitzroy ‘The victory over apartheid was, in other words, the result of mass action, not only in South Africa but here in Australia, too.’ So what’s the NT intervention, if not a little apartheid?

11 February 201012 May 2010

There’s no censorship here

Jacinda Woodhead

(I should preface this post with a disclosure: I’m a long-time Melbourne International Film Festival [MIFF] attendee, and am quite partial to cinema.) This week we learned that Richard Moore’s position as executive director of the Melbourne International Film Festival will not be renewed. Finally, I thought, there is some kind of justice in Melbourne. […]

8 February 201012 May 2010

New law requires women to name baby and paint nursery before getting abortion

Jacinda Woodhead

An Abbottonian prophecy – courtesy of The Onion. (There is, unfortunately, a 15 second advert for Zombieland first.)

2 February 201012 May 2010

How blogging and hip-hop are undermining the US military from within

Jacinda Woodhead

‘I bet you never stop-loss nobody no more.’ Iraq veteran Marc Hall, aka hip-hop artist Marc Watercus, is currently in pre-trial confinement awaiting court-martial in Georgia. He was jailed on 11 December because he wrote and performed a song called ‘Stop-loss’ – which he then sent to the Pentagon after learning that they were sending […]

30 January 201012 May 2010

This is what a war crime looks like

Jacinda Woodhead

Actually, no. This is what a civilian massacre by Blackwater contractors in Iraq looks like.

25 January 201012 May 2010

‘Yo comments are whack’

Jacinda Woodhead

For all those who have comment fatigue due to the racist, sexist, homophobic and grammatically incorrect commenting occurring all over the internet. Disclaimer: I’m not opposed to a lack of capitalisation.

20 January 201012 May 2010

‘Who cares about gender at a time like this?’

Jacinda Woodhead

According to a post on the SPUNC blog last week, independent Australian publishing does. Laurie Steed wrote that there aren’t enough women submitting to journals and publishers in Australia: Of the 200 submissions received by Affirm Press, around 80 percent have been from male writers. This year also sees the release of the next Sleepers […]

17 January 201012 May 2010

And while we’re on the topic of Haiti

Jacinda Woodhead

You didn’t have to be a Marxist political analyst to see what the US was going to do after the disaster – see Jeff’s ‘the politics of misery’. Imperialist agendas include, but are not restricted to: bringing in the military denying planes with aid permission to land coordinating efforts with Israel And now we have […]