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.
Raaza Jamshed is a writer drawn to the poetics of gender, language, and identity. She is a doctoral candidate at the Writing and Society Research Center at Western Sydney University. Her short story won the second prize for the 2019 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. Her recent short stories have appeared in Meanjin and Australian Book Review.
