Hopefully, many people will have already seen information relating to Overland’s Connections initiative, an attempt to foster greater cultural diversity in the journal through a series of essays by emerging writers from marginalised backgrounds. With support from CAL’s Cultural fund, each of the journal’s next seven editions will feature a major political essay developed in […]

Clare Strahan is an emerging Melbourne writer who has banged out a novel on a manual typewriter by candlelight and is sure that must count for something. She has published a few poems and a couple of short stories, is a freelance editor and flies about the twittersphere as 9fragments. Clare chats with Overland about […]

What do twenty-first-century women and the sixteenth-century Protestant revolt have in common? The advantages of a new, epoch-changing communications technology. Last week on the Overland blog Jacinda Woodhead raised the ghost of Marshall McLuhan and his 1960s catch phrase ‘the medium is the message’. The medium might be the message – but what if a […]

For Overland 202, we thought we’d try something different – author interviews and other supplementaries to accompany our published pieces, so you can get more of an insight into how these pieces came to be. Here, Rjurik Davidson, associate editor at Overland and author of The Library of Forgotten Books, chats with Overland intern Clare […]

As I’m typing this blog post, only a few kilometres away on Lonsdale Street in the city, the annual Antipodes festival is in full swing. There’s fairy floss, carnival rides, imported Greek singers, bouzouki, Greek dancing and, of course, souvlaki. The Antipodes festival has been running since 1987 and, according to their website and to […]

I’ve heard so many writers wax lyrical about their early poetic influences and, indeed, I’ve done it myself in interviews. Musicality plays a great part in my poetry and some time ago, a young writer asked me what the first album I bought was. They might have been expecting Tracey Chapman, or perhaps even Gil […]

So you want to be a poet. When you desperately want something, it’s difficult to get past the wanting, and look into the mechanics of achieving that thing. It’s not enough to want to be a poet, just like it’s not enough to want to be a dancer. Dancing requires grace, agility, athleticism, rhythm and […]

HarperCollins is committed to the library channel. We believe this change balances the value libraries get from our titles with the need to protect our authors and ensure a presence in public libraries and the communities they serve for years to come. Remember the library card inside the front cover (sometimes the back) that used […]

It’s 22 January, and the first gathering of the Still Waters Black Womens Storytelling Network. The group founder, Zimbabwean writer Fadzai Jaravaza, pauses, takes a breath, looks around at the group of beautiful brown women gathered for tea in a small room at the Institute for Postcolonial Studies in North Melbourne and asks ‘Any questions?’ […]

your transaction has been processed by paypal this purchase will appear on your credit card bill as item: revolution number of items: 1 cost: $AUD priceless the revolution thanks you for choosing itself the revolution is downloading onto your ipad & being transferred onto your iphone it is an irevolution the revolution is i i […]

I have recently returned from a blissful week at Varuna Writers’ Centre. For the uninitiated Varuna is writers’ heaven. Housed in author Eleanor Dark’s former Blue Mountains residency, it is the only place of its kind in Australia where writers can stay and focus solely on writing. With four other writers living in the house, […]

While I was pregnant with my (now four-month-old) daughter, I was performing a feature poetry set in Melbourne and during the break a woman came up to me and said: Congratulations! I’m so glad to see you’re expecting. That poem about your son dying is so sad, it makes my heart break. My response was […]

Last week the London chapter of the international writing-school revolution began with the opening of the Ministry of Stories. A few months ago, I went to Dublin and paid a visit to the Irish centre, Fighting Words. Set up by author Roddy Doyle and former director of Amnesty International Ireland, Sean Love, the centre had […]

For my Overland Subscriberthon post this year, I wanted to raise and discuss the importance of writing community. Here at Overland, I have always felt a sense of community; a place where I can share my thoughts and engage in hearty political debate. A place where I can learn, make mistakes, reflect. We may be […]

It was after convening my first twenty poetry readings and open microphone competitions that I figured out that political poetry has a really bad reputation in Australia. As I hadn’t been on the Sydney poetry scene for long, it took another chunk of time to work out my definition of what political poetry is (and […]

This blog will be in two parts. Part One: a rant about how bloody important literature (and thus Overland) is to life, the universe and everything. Part Two (at the request of Rjurik Davidson): a short Choose Your Own Adventure tale in which you, the protagonist, take the future of Australian literature in your own […]