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.
Robert Sullivan is a significant internationally published Māori poet with nine books, including the poem Star Waka (Auckland University Press), the graphic novel Maui: Legends of the Outcast, and the New Zealand Post Children’s Book of the Year, Weaving Earth and Sky. He is head of Manukau Institute of Technology’s Creative Writing School, and one of the editors of the journal trout.
