Published in Overland Issue 216 Spring 2014 Uncategorized Editorial Jeff Sparrow children roast in the fires of this terrible century and no love is enough no elegy sufficient That’s regular Overland contributor Alison Croggon in her 1997 poem, ‘Ode to Walt Whitman’. Her words circulated on social media recently, at a time when the powerful seemed to have declared war on children. Half the population of Gaza is under eighteen and, as the world’s fourth largest military unleashed advanced weaponry on a tiny strip of land populated by 1.8 million people, the morgues soon filled with tiny bodies. Closer to home, we learned more details about how the Australian refugee detention centres are slowly sending kids mad. If no elegy is sufficient in this terrible century, why, then, write? Why publish, of all things, a literary journal? This special, expanded edition celebrates sixty years of Overland by asking those questions. It begins with the journalist and activist Laurie Penny revisiting Orwell’s famous essay on writing. It features a selection of editors from around the world explaining what they aim to accomplish with their publications. And it presents an array of essays, stories and poems that seek out to show, in practice, what the written word can achieve. Much has changed in six decades, and, unfortunately, much has not. Today, more than ever, we can see why the fight for the values Overland represents matters so greatly. In her poem, Croggon puts it like this. and truly what is my faith except a stubborn voice casting out its shining length to where I walk alone sick and afraid and unable to accept defeat singing as I was born to 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 First published in Overland Issue 228 30 March 2023 Culture RollerCoaster Tycoon and the art of niche hobbies Zac Picker As a writer, I spend too much time awake at night worrying about building an audience for my work. And yet, I spend even more time awake at night, planning my next RollerCoaster Tycoon park in my head, for an audience of the hundred-or-so RCT parkmakers I care about the most. First published in Overland Issue 228 29 March 2023 Aboriginal Australia Standing in the dawn’s new light: truth-telling for settlers Anthony Kelly There’s a paradox about being a settler in a stolen country. No matter when we arrived, we inherited the bounty of genocidal violence. Many of us are the beneficiaries of the intergenerational wealth-building that saw English, Irish and Scottish settler families grow rich on the sheep, timber, wheat and resources provided by stolen land. We have a profound responsibility to dismantle the ‘lie-telling’ because it shores up this legacy and the systems of colonial violence that continue in our lifetimes.