Published in Overland Issue 209 Summer 2012 · Writing editorial Jeff Sparrow Overland is fundamentally committed to emerging writers. This edition features the winning entries from the Overland Victoria University Short Story Prize, the richest and most prestigious competition of its kind in Australia. They are introduced by Jennifer Mills, Overland’s incoming fiction editor, in a judge’s report offering a snapshot of the huge quantity of writing that was assessed. We are very pleased to publish the three successful stories in an issue in which many of the essays ask hard questions about the theory and practice of writing itself. We rarely theme Overland these days, for the literary journal is a form that thrives on diversity, even eclecticism. But this edition emerged naturally, since so many contributors seemed to grappling with the same problems. What does it mean to be an author in Australia? Can I make a living from my work? Is writing merely a private hobby, a practice akin to stamp collecting? If not, what role does it play in Australian society? Should writing involve a politics – and, if so, how? Writing is always difficult, particular so in turbulent economic times, in a small country like Australia. But that very difficulty makes confronting broader questions all the more important. Overland 209 invites both new and established writers (and, for that matter, readers) to join an ongoing conversation about writing and its role. Jeff Sparrow Jeff Sparrow is a Walkley Award-winning writer, broadcaster and former editor of Overland. More by Jeff Sparrow › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 3 First published in Overland Issue 228 26 May 20238 June 2023 · Writing garramilla/Darwin Lulu Houdini We sit in East Point Reserve and look at how the gidjaas, green ants, make globe-like homes out of the leaves — connected edges with fibrous tissue that I later learn is faithful silk. Safe inside. Why isn’t it safe outside? I pick up the plastic around this circular lake cause this is the way […] 1 First published in Overland Issue 228 23 February 202324 February 2023 · Writing From work to text, and back again: ChatGPT and the (new) death of the author Rob Horning Generative models extinguish the dream that Barthes’s Death of the Author articulates by fulfilling it. Their ‘tissue of signs’ seems less like revolution and more like the fear that AI will create a recursive postmodern nightmare world of perpetual sameness that we will all accept because we no longer remember otherwise or how to create an alternative.