258 2025 Buy this issue Inside Overland issue 258, you'll find twin essays: Norman Saadi Nikro on Edward Said's critique of liberal racism, and Yahia Lababidi on the many Edward Saids, Overland's ex-poetry editor Toby Fitch on doomscrolling, Thomas Moran on the suburban grotesque and SNH on the world-changing aspect of violence, plus loads more. Issue Contents Features The many Edward Saids: exile and vision Yahia Lababidi Doom-Fugues: their centrifugal/centripetal potential Toby Fitch Suburban grotesque: Body Melt and the anti-suburban tradition Thomas Moran Harm’s miasma, joy’s face SNH (Ethno-violence) Edward Said’s critique of liberal racism Norman Saadi Nikro Fiction Thalassophobia | 2024 Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize winner Rachel Ang The Overland Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize 2024 Judging Notes Jennifer Down and André Dao A very sensitive person Jing Cramb Childself Greg Foyster Kaleen means water in Wiradjuri Alison Martin “Playing nice was getting me nowhere”: Desperation and death at [Australian university] Alex Cothren Poetry Emote Sarah Penwarden The dog house | 2024 Judith Wright Poetry Prize, first place Neika Lehman Ex-landfill pastoral Mitchell Welch referencing suburbs Laura Charlton How to echo Kathy Tierney The Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and Emerging Poets 2024 Judges’ Report Astrid Lorange, Ender Başkan and Toby Fitch Trans pastoral Joel Keith PARALLEL UNIVERSE Ed Southorn Three snowy hydro fragments Angela Gardner Travelog in eggshell-white Andrew David Craig fugue Alice Allan insensible loss Alex McInnis Editorial Editorial Evelyn Araluen and Jonathan Dunk Browse the issue: Features Published in Overland Issue 258 2025 · The many Edward Saids: exile and vision Yahia Lababidi As Gaza burns and the world’s cameras turn elsewhere, I find myself returning to the many Edward Saids: scholar, critic, dissident, even a kind of spiritual figure who bore witness with uncommon clarity to the heartbreak of displacement, and who insisted that thought itself must answer to conscience. Published in Overland Issue 258 2025 · Doom-Fugues: their centrifugal/centripetal potential Toby Fitch The act of doomscrolling a teeming amount of virtual content is widely familiar in the actual internet tube of dreams of 2025, yet poems have always been literature’s doomscrolls. Published in Overland Issue 258 2025 · Suburban grotesque: Body Melt and the anti-suburban tradition Thomas Moran Thirty years on, as we watch Body Melt (1993), the schlock horror classic directed by Philip Brophy, we are struck by the technical proficiency of the practical special effects, its nihilistic send-up of Australian archetypes but perhaps, most of all, by its vision of suburbia, the site in which this grotesque “splatstick” plays out. Published in Overland Issue 258 2025 · Harm’s miasma, joy’s face SNH I contacted a healer recommended by a friend, in a period that I feared that a μάτιασμα* was on me. Over email and only half believing, I gave him my longitude and latitude and he went to work. He told me I had lost a soul fragment. I returned to a moment of having my small blue underwear lifted away from my body. Published in Overland Issue 258 2025 · (Ethno-violence) Edward Said’s critique of liberal racism Norman Saadi Nikro In the Afterword to the published version of her Edward W Said Lecture at Columbia University given in late September 2023, Isabella Hammad asks what would Said say about the current crisis in Gaza. Although her lecture was given just before the October events, the Afterword — specifically penned to address the ensuing Israeli genocide — reads like an extended footnote to her lecture, exploring the gravity of Said’s work for an understanding of Israel’s decades-long occupation, ethnic cleansing, and colonisation of Palestine. Fiction Published in Overland Issue 258 2025 · Thalassophobia | 2024 Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize winner Rachel Ang Our upstairs neighbour had agreed to take care of Leroy while my husband and I were away. As my husband had arranged automatons to both feed and water, little real caretaking was required. Rather, I explained sheepishly, Leroy was a soft-minded child who required regular attention and reassurance of his general goodness as a person, or his mental health would suffer, and he would stalk up and down the apartment, crying at intervals, and our return would be received with displeasure. Published in Overland Issue 258 2025 · The Overland Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize 2024 Judging Notes Jennifer Down and André Dao This year’s Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize received over 370 entries interpreting the theme of travel in broad and imaginative ways. Given the number of entries, those experimenting with form, language and perspective — or otherwise taking creative risks — were a pleasure to run across. Published in Overland Issue 258 2025 · A very sensitive person Jing Cramb My Sylvie thrusts a piece of scrunched-up paper onto my stomach. “For you, Mummy! I painted you at daycare today.” Published in Overland Issue 258 2025 · Childself Greg Foyster Meg had forced her into it. Gone on and on in that bossy way of hers, never leaving you alone, always wanting to help. They were the worst, the helpers, the do-gooders. Published in Overland Issue 258 2025 · Kaleen means water in Wiradjuri Alison Martin Sometimes a sparrow of hope flutters in my ribcage and I can’t help that. Even here, even after everything, when all I have left is this journal they’ve asked us to keep. Still that sparrow stirs. Published in Overland Issue 258 2025 · “Playing nice was getting me nowhere”: Desperation and death at [Australian university] Alex Cothren This interview-based study explores how a series of deaths at [Australian university] symbolise the toxic work conditions created by the Neoliberalist turn in tertiary education. Poetry Published in Overland Issue 258 2025 · Emote Sarah Penwarden The sun is strange today, / sky glows dull and light — / dust particles — and I / am full of others, / carrying crowds. Published in Overland Issue 258 2025 · The dog house | 2024 Judith Wright Poetry Prize, first place Neika Lehman I was a home birth at the top of the hill, the hill shouldering our mountain Kunanyi. At the bottom of the hill was The Dog House. Published in Overland Issue 258 2025 · Ex-landfill pastoral Mitchell Welch The Aussie raven plucks its musical ribcage / and Blue Ribbon labels fly like white flags / at the highest peak visible from the street. Published in Overland Issue 258 2025 · referencing suburbs Laura Charlton you are a thin writer in a dark / age. you will discover the back / corner of your own life / and settle it. build upon it / your matchstick steelworks, / cut from it your molasses- / black diamonds. Published in Overland Issue 258 2025 · How to echo Kathy Tierney The boy watched that mangrove snake slide / among the mudskippers, crabs, and shrimps near / the old Pearling Jetty. Published in Overland Issue 258 2025 · The Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and Emerging Poets 2024 Judges’ Report Astrid Lorange, Ender Başkan and Toby Fitch From a pool of nearly 800 entries, judges Astrid Lorange, Ender Başkan and outgoing Overland poetry editor Toby Fitch have selected one outstanding winner and two runners-up. Published in Overland Issue 258 2025 · Trans pastoral Joel Keith How to tell / cut rock / from the natural wall / of the gorge? Published in Overland Issue 258 2025 · PARALLEL UNIVERSE Ed Southorn Deified by a confederacy of dunces / blazing guns in a rollercoaster, / the genius of Red Skull is to convince / he’s a genius, actually very smart, / a very stable genius. Published in Overland Issue 258 2025 · Three snowy hydro fragments Angela Gardner women, a few in slacks most in skirts / clutch cameras and handbags / men in ties and hats — they gather at shore / for the steamboat / on grass that is dry, golden, sparse / under a dead tree / — offering no shade. Published in Overland Issue 258 2025 · Travelog in eggshell-white Andrew David Crossing the carpark of earthly dilemmas, Rhiannon Really satisfied Snickersbar, third of her name, paused before the bastion of discounted accessorisations, its rarefied air dry with artificial coolth. Published in Overland Issue 258 2025 · Craig fugue Alice Allan Kim Beazley promised / he’d make Les Murray / poet laureate/ as soon as he was PM, / but Labor dumped Kim / the same week his brother died./ Les died later. / Craig moved out. Published in Overland Issue 258 2025 · insensible loss Alex McInnis We learn in silence which side to run the zip of a body bag, which toe to tag. We learn in silence the cruel mimicry of infant mannequins; splayed hips, soft chest. We learn in silence. Editorial Published in Overland Issue 258 2025 · Editorial Evelyn Araluen and Jonathan Dunk Our grievances and discomforts from that time are so small, so meaningless when we consider the scale of violence that continues to roll on. As we write, at least 180 Palestinian media workers have been killed by Israeli forces. Is that the kind of truth AAAAA wants to silence? The story they thought Australian audiences shouldn’t hear? Previous Issue 257 Summer 2024 Next Issue 259: Feb/Mar 2026
