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.
Rúnar Helgi Vignisson is an Icelandic author and translator who has won many honours for his writing, among them The Icelandic Translation Award for JM Coetzee’s Boyhood. Vignisson has translated books by many acclaimed American, English and Australian authors, such as Philip Roth, Amy Tan, William Faulkner, Ian McEwan and Elizabeth Jolley. He is the author of seven books of fiction; his newest book, Love and Other Complications, was published in 2012 and won one of the most prestigious literary prizes in Iceland, The DV Cultural Prize for Literature. His short stories have been featured in Icelandic, German, and Spanish anthologies. Vignisson is currently director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Iceland.
