Published in Overland Issue 226.5 Autumn fiction · Main Posts The Autumn Fiction edition Editorial Team Several years back I visited the former premises of Overland, a ramshackle house posing as an office on a residential street in Footscray (or so I remember). Within, ducking from room to room, was ‘Team Overland’, including former editor Jeff Sparrow and current editor Jacinda Woodhead. That quiet afternoon, in which I was interviewed for an intern position, changed my life. Although I never became an intern at Overland, I instead began to read its fiction submissions. I was woken to the dreams the industry holds – the incredible catalogue of talent and spirit swelling the submissions bottlenecks of time-poor publishing houses. It is a (slightly gruesome, occasionally heart-breaking) spectacular. This past December I started reading submissions as guest editor for this fiction edition. There were more than 280 submissions, including an abundance of stories of love and fear and trauma, of families, of fever and in fantasy. The four stories I have selected, among a shortlisted group of six or seven, have been chosen for their intimacy and expression of human thought and behaviour. My thanks go to the courage of everybody who submitted, and particularly to the authors of these four stories – Rebecca Slater, Stevi-Lee Alver, Stuart Wilkinson and David Turnbull – for their talent and grace. I’m a stranger you’ve let step into your stories and I’ll be ever grateful for the opportunity. This role has been such a romance. I’ve had such a summer of love. Image: ‘Panegyrics of Granovetter’ / Sarah C Murray Read the rest of our Autumn Fiction edition: ‘The fish’, by Rebecca Slater ‘a madman’s lullaby’, by Stevi-Lee Alver ‘A long breath’, by Stuart Wilkinson ‘Dance of the mobiles’, by David Turnbull Editorial Team . More by Editorial Team › 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 28 March 20249 April 2024 · Main Posts Why we should value not only lived experience, but also lived expertise Sukhmani Khorana In the wake of this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, I want to extend the central idea of El Gibbs’s 2022 essay on 'lived expertise' and argue that in media accounts of racism, analytical expertise and lived experience ought to be valued together and even in the same body. 5 March 2024 · Main Posts Andrew Charlton’s school assignment Alex McKinnon Australia's Pivot to India exists for three reasons: so that when Andrew Charlton is interviewed on the radio or introduced on Q+A, his bio includes the phrase "he has written a book about Indian-Australian relations"; to fend off accusations that he is another Kristina Keneally engaging in electoral colonialism in western Sydney; and to help the Albanese government strengthen economic and military ties with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.