Overland is aware of reports regarding the addition of a false signature on a petition we’ve published in support of Australian University students’ right to protest—what others might call their freedom of speech. We have since deleted the name of a journalist at the request of the ABC, following the publication of defamatory statements by […]

Since the attacks committed by Hamas on the seventh of last month, we have received considerable criticism, offered in good faith and otherwise, for publishing a number of collective statements in solidarity with the Palestinian people, and for our staff-members' presence at marches in protest of Israel’s ongoing war-crimes. Given the sclerotic condition of Australian political discourse, this isn’t surprising. But I have been shocked by the doggedly misdirective persistence of these arguments as the bombs continued to fall.

In truth, we expected little engagement with the question itself, but hoped it might encourage writers to think actively about their proximity to the stories they tell. Our process cannot reverse circumstances of exploitation, appropriation, silencing or other mistreatments of the literatures and experiences of the oppressed and marginalised, nor do we feel it conflates these with all other acts of literary imagination.

Friends, it’s getting dark. gumbih bundahng juhm. Australia is burning, the streets of its cities choke with miasmic smoke. junugur nyabay? A smirking unprincipled marketing executive rules the land, and an amoral fop has just been handed the biggest conservative majority in Westminster since Thatcher.