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.
Kathryn van Beek has an MA from Victoria University of Wellington’s International Institute of Modern Letters. She has won the Mindfood Short Story Prize and the Headland Prize, and in 2020 she released a collection of short stories, Pet, which is also available as a podcast. Kathryn was the driving force behind a recent change to New Zealand’s Holidays Act that enables people grieving miscarriage to take bereavement leave.
