Translated literally, Shanghai means ‘city on the sea’. It was the first city opened to foreign involvement under British imperialism, and Western influences are present in even the most sacred spaces. Remnants of European architecture look grey next to the yellow ginkgo trees. The colours bloom slowly, then all at once. My childhood fascination turns into a feeling I recognise as longing.

This is my home but not my country. When I visited Sicily for the first time as an adult, in the 1990s, I understood that maybe it was my country but it could never be my home. The fig tree is oblivious to its origins, to its alien status but for me, this belonging and not belonging is the source of all my questions, all my writing.

Various arguments have been made to explain hypertext fiction’s lack of mainstream success: that hypertext narratives impose impossible cognitive demands on readers; that the inability to establish meaning and coherence leaves readers always floating on the surface, never fully immersed; or (to stay on the theme of immersion) that we just want something we can read in the bath.

The Overland Victoria University Short Story Prize received an impressive selection of short stories this year that, in the words of judge Pip Adams, 'would make an amazing snapshot of the short story in 2019'.

Stinson briefly acknowledges the ‘fantastic’ wins of Melissa Lucashenko for the Miles and Alexis Wright for the Stella (in 2018, for her book Tracker), but seems to regard these as flukes. He ignores the fact that women have won seven of the eight most recent Miles Franklin Awards – an utterly astonishing turnaround in the historical record of the Miles, which before 2012 had awarded the prize to just nine women since it was established in 1957.

We’d like to thank the many entrants who worked hard on their story submissions for the prize this year. Our four judges for the 2019 competition – writers Pip Adam, Michelle Aung Thin, Steven Amsterdam and Enza Gandolfo – have now decided on a shortlist of fourteen outstanding stories.

The casual lit sub-genre is a kind of spiritual twin to ‘quit lit’. Both strands chronicle the challenges of the neoliberal university – quit lit is written from the perspective of scholars who’ve departed the ivory tower (or are in the process of doing so), while casual lit documents the lived experiences of those who are struggling to stay put.

Quite simply, the literature of Manus and Nauru is necessary in order to comprehend Australia.

I’m a huge fan of Rooney’s work. But the things I love about her books are not the universal, the relate-able, the newsworthy. It is the way she brings her unique voice, worldview, political ideology and lived experience to the page.

What we see in the face of climate catastrophe is business as usual – property developers continue to acquire, wealth continues to be accumulated by the few, and patriarchal ideologies remain rampant. An interview with Vincent Silk.

What drives my work now, and what I think is a big question for us post-#MeToo, is the potential for erotica and sex-fiction writing and reading to play a part in creating a non-fiction world, or a new sexual reality for women.

Not awarding the Vogel’s this year is downright cruel. Mediocre books get published all the time, and some of them even win multiple awards: who cares if you give the Vogel’s to a manuscript that isn’t a work of utter genius?

For years – because of my work and my children – I have been pondering the possible impacts of climate change, and what they might mean for motherhood, for the adults my children will become.

When I first met Andrew, in the mid-1990s, he had already won the Vogel award for Praise and had written a play, Bait. Working alongside David Berthold, Bait was the result of Andrew’s time as a resident writer at the Queensland Theatre Company. As fate would have it, the company passed on producing it. Andrew’s time at the company was also over, and so that may well have been it for Andrew’s involvement in the theatre.

Authors are always put at the centre of Australia’s copyright debates, grounding claims for more rights or fewer exceptions. Despite that, our law has no explicit rights to protect authors in the case of unfair, unclear or outdated contacts. I criticised this state of affairs in the last spring issue of Overland, making a case for Australia finally joining the majority of the world’s nations by granting authors appropriate baseline protections.

We are pleased to announce that Overland will be running two writing residencies in 2019, both of which are supported by the Malcolm Robertson Foundation. These residencies will again address a lack of opportunities for underrepresented writers, providing space, time, stipend and mentorship.