Published in Overland Issue 234 Autumn 2019 Reading / Writing Fiction editorial Evelyn Araluen and Jonathan Dunk Reading 311 submissions gathered from across the world in the tight window of one week is complexly affective. Encouraging through the breadth and energy of the futures and pasts being simultaneously imagined; confronting in the depths of suffering and despair under capital those narratives so often described. Finally, of course, it was an impossible challenge to say which of so many stories, in so many voices and styles, should be published at this particular moment. It follows that our decisions, along with all other kinds of literary judgement, were nothing like impartial, objective or scientific. We read exemplary pieces from writers of all kinds of experience, from established luminaries to those writing for the first time. In all cases we skewed towards work that was different in form or content from the kinds of writing often published in Australian journals. Louis Klee’s narrative ‘In Cassilis’ forms a disturbing mediation on the fragility and contingency of the habits of reality, articulated in disturbingly precise, crystalline detail. Mykaela Saunders’ ‘Buried time’ is a moving spectro-surrealist rememory of settler-colonial industrial capital extraction. Entangled and emboldened by the legacy of literary elders such as Alexis Wright and Melissa Lucashenko, and the endless yet-unsaid particularities and possibilities of Aboriginal immemoriality, Saunders’ voice is portentous and unafraid. Meleika Gesa-Fatafehi’s ‘Into the valley’ stages a narrative of grief, horror, state violence and matrilineal love in a house that both holds and haunts its inhabitants. The youngest contributor to this issue, in this piece Gesa-Fatafehi steps forward as a talent well-equipped to answer to the weight of ancestral reciprocity and her own potential. Her future publications should be watched with anticipation. Corey Wakeling’s scathing work of immanent critique, ‘The Melancholy New Patriot’, interrogates the pathological hatred and entitlement of white nationalism, as defined by Ghassan Hage’s recent article in The Guardian. This work is part of a necessary process of deconstructing the assumptions and complicities of White Australia’s cultural fabric, but we feel compelled to add that some readers might find it distressing in the light of the recent tragedy in Christchurch. The satirical edge of this story should be understood as a stimulant rather than a catharsis – to paraphrase Alison Whittaker’s comments on Eggboy, it shouldn’t be an ethical release valve. Image: Bill Smith / Flickr Read the rest of Overland 234 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Evelyn Araluen Evelyn Araluen is a poet, educator, and co-editor of Overland. Her Stella Prize winning book DROPBEAR was published by UQP in 2021. Born, raised, and writing in Dharug country, she is a Bundjalung descendant. She tweets at @evelynaraluen More by Evelyn Araluen and Jonathan Dunk Jonathan Dunk Jonathan Dunk is the co-editor of Overland, and a widely published poet and scholar. He lives on Woi Wurrung country. More by Evelyn Araluen and Jonathan Dunk 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 5 First published in Overland Issue 228 6 April 202231 May 2022 Writing What happens when authors stop listening to their editors Jessica Stewart When I moved into a second career in editing and publishing, friends told me that working as an editor might temper my love of books—that a professional eye might spy previously unnoticed flaws. I dismissed this, but they were right. Before, if a book left me restless, dissatisfied, annoyed, I would simply close it and move on. Now, I know what is wrong, why I, the reader, feel short-changed. 3 First published in Overland Issue 228 22 November 202131 January 2022 Writing Precarious words Jennifer Mills Eight years ago, I wrote a short piece for Overland called ‘Pay the Writers’. I was fed up with being asked to work for ‘exposure’. It was a time when a lot of writing work was moving online, and this work was often unpaid. Writers were at risk of losing our incomes entirely. If anything needed some exposure, it was the working conditions of freelancers.