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.
Zeinab Mir is an emerging Sydney-based artist and comic maker who explores the themes of identity, displacement, and personal history. She has exhibited her work in group exhibitions at Chrissie Cotter and Cement Fondue galleries, and has self-published a number of comic zines, which she performed at two live, Read to Me events. She volunteers as a workshop facilitator with the not-for-profit community art organization Refugee Art Project.
