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.
Shirley Le is a Vietnamese-Australian writer from Western Sydney and is a part of the Sweatshop Writers Collective. Her short stories and essays have been published on SBS Online, The Lifted Brow, Griffith Review, Meanjin and The Big Black Thing. In 2017, Shirley was a recipient of a WestWords Emerging Writers Fellowship. She is now working on her debut novel through a mentorship with Affirm Press.
