The underlying logic of the carceral system is that certain people must be made to suffer to keep the rest of the community safe. It’s a maddening lie which has been repeated so many times that we’ve forgotten there are other ways to address harm.

On hangover days my boyfriend and I watch Sailor Moon. It’s ultimate hangover viewing. It’s also, we decided one morning, groggy from the night before and running on little more than BBQ chips and gummy bears, an anti-capitalist text.

I am an egregiously unlikely reviewer for this commemorative volume on the history of New Theatre: I have rarely seen any theatre. Memory is so difficult: as a child of Communist parents, I sort of recall attending with my mother a New Theatre play in Forbes Street, Darlinghurst, in Sydney, down from Kings Cross; also visiting backstage at I think a Waterside Workers Federation hall at the end of a play, my mother wished to say hello to Evelyn Docker, a prominent leftwing actor, and she introduced me to her, I picture a little boy staring at her, mesmerised.

On 6 August 2023 my colleague, mentor and friend Elizabeth Webby AM, Emeritus Professor of Australian Literature at the University of Sydney, died after a long illness. Elizabeth was a no-nonsense person, neither squeamish nor prone to euphemism. In that spirit I opt for the direct, plain-spoken language of “dying” and “death” rather than softer terms like “passed” or “departed”.

Sometimes, when I wake, I cannot stand the thought of living off the fragile fruits of our labour — all the things that wither and die in the palms of our hands and at the bottom of our stomachs.

When Jens found Lucy Teller squatting in the dandelions, he had been planning to tell her he was her father.

I am sitting on a deckchair. It is so humid even the air feels moist on your skin. It doesn’t take long before the waves become heavier and the ocean is howling. I am on a cruise to K’gari island. I am not a swimmer. I fear deep water.

“You can take this off now,” Tegan says, leaning over and tugging at Blue’s bow tie. She’s sitting cross-legged and she falls against him, one knee flipping up beneath her purple taffeta dress. “It’s so hot still, how can you even breathe.”

One Aunty says — / I don’t remember. Her mother says / she was only half. The other Aunty says / we’re nearly white.

a niet v pokoji pokoja / there is no peace in peace — Andrej Sládkovič, Marinapushing against the thin walls of the weekend with all the pent-up sexual energy ofan apology Sidney’s Defence is an alphabet soup hunger & I’m broadcasting myconfession into corporate Australia sort of like a book but wanting — no – […]

We believe that it is wrong to turn away from the suffering of Palestinian people. We believe that Overland should not shy away from criticism of the extreme violence of the Israeli military forces and the collective punishment of civilians in Gaza. We fear that we are witnessing a genocide unfold in plain view, and believe that Overland and the broader community have a moral responsibility to call attention to this horror.