This issue goes to print on the cusp of a darkening world… Overland 255 is the second issue in a suite of four special editions dedicated to commemorating 70 years of Overland. In this issue, Samuel J Cox interviews Kim Scott on his works True Country (1993) and Benang (1995) in ‘Writing from the South’. Elsewhere, Juliet Scott interrogates ‘The Australian Media’s problem with Palestine’ and Sam Ryan looks back at Overland and the state of arts funding in Australia from 1973 to 1975. This issue also features poetry from Yeena Kirkbright, DJ Huppatz, Debbie Lim, among others, and short fiction from Lauren Collee, Madeline Byrne and Jordan Smith.
Ota Yoko (1906–1963) was a romance novelist before Hiroshima was struck with an atomic bomb. Thereafter, she dedicated her life to documenting her experience as a surviving victim, carving out the field in which she is renowned as one of the most significant Japanese writers. ‘Like light on the sea floor’ (1,700 words) was the first long-form biographical account of the bomb ever published (in Japan’s national newspaper The Yomiuri Shimbun), and is out of copyright and in the public domain. It has never been translated to English before.
