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.
Julie Janson is an Australian writer based in Sydney. Julie is of Aboriginal descent from the Burruberongal clan of the Darug Nation of the Hawkesbury River, NSW. She was raised in a Boronia Park Housing Commission home on the Lane Cove River in Sydney. She is an established playwright with ten plays produced professionally in Australia, Indonesia and USA. Her debut novel, The Crocodile Hotel, was published by Cyclops Press 2015.
