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.
Meleika Gesa-Fatafehi is pretty hilarious and laughs too much, so much that her Black/Indigenous and Pasifika ancestors are probably tired of her. Lucky she alternates burdening the two sides of her ancestry who are from Murray (Mer) Island, from the Zagareb and Dauareb tribes and Tonga. She loves talking about all things nerdy, as well as decolonising spaces online and in real life. If she’s upset any of her ancestors whilst making this bio, she’s sorry.