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The Best of New Writing in Australia

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This Is Not Journalism

Margaret Simons

‘Part of the story of the decline in Australian journalism can be told with data and dollars. Part of it is about belief and culture—a crisis of faith.’


Necessity Has No Law

Guy Rundle

In the past six to eight years in the West, a massive social and cultural movement has come to the fore... the rise of the knowledge class.


Adventures In The New Sobriety

Yves Rees

Welcome to the new sobriety: feminised, young and aspirational.


What I'm Reading

A Crowd Favourite

This regular Meanjin online feature is more than 150 posts old ... and counting. Browse the collection.

From The Archive: Daily Readings

RSS Meanjin Daily Reading

  • Endings by Ron Gilbert August 14, 2022
  • Why? by Ralph Rigby August 11, 2022
  • A Trip down (False) Memory Lane by Dan Hogan August 10, 2022
  • The Creative City by David Yencken August 9, 2022
  • What Cannot Stay by Lisa Seckold August 8, 2022

Daily Reading Archive

Private Sadness and Public Grief
Jenny Sinclair

You’re never more more famous than when you die. Being born is nothing special. Unless you’re Jesus or in line to a throne, it’s a profoundly equitable moment. Babies are nothing but potential. At the moment of death though, everything crystallises: the story has an ending. Word travels fast; the name of the deceased is passed around friends, family, acquaintances, and, if they were a public figure, half the world via social media. There’s a summing up, a judgement, a parading of defining moments (Olivia Newton-John in tight black trousers, Judith Durham’s voice soaring above 200,000 people at the Myer […]

Cultural Policy: Have Your Say
Sophie Cunningham

The new federal government has started its term with positive messages about rebuilding areas of our national culture. The arts minister, Tony Burke, appears to be listening to what the writing and reading community are saying. The development of a new National Cultural Policy offers a rare opportunity for us all to inform the vision for the arts in Australia, and to advocate for the central importance of the literary sector. We need to seize this moment to ensure a thriving sector for years to come, which is why I am inviting you to make a submission as a part […]

Online Reviews: August
The Meanjin Team

We’re excited to launch a new series of online reviews, edited by Cher Tan. You’ll find the first offerings below—watch this space for more excellent content soon.     Reviewed: Everything Feels Like the End of the World, Else Fitzgerald by Alex Gerrans “Else Fitzgerald’s debut short story collection, Everything Feels Like the End of the World, is about love in a time of climate grief. The crux of the collection points to how even though we are now experiencing relentless change—climate-related or otherwise—love and loss remain constant…” Read More           Reviewed: Raised by Wolves, Jess Ho by […]

September Meanjin: Coming Soon
The Meanjin Team

Chances are you’re still picking your way through the June edition of Meanjin … Margaret Simons’ detailed study of the crisis in Australian journalism, or Yves Rees on the new sobriety perhaps? Maybe you’re lost in the fiction of James Bradley or Karen Wyld? Well, we don’t mean to distract you … but we did think you might appreciate a first mention of September’s Spring edition. The lead essay is a compelling piece from Kate Holden, looking at the great paradox of modern life: the many commonalities of human experience and our increasing isolation as atomised individuals … and this […]

Essays
Vierge Ouvrante, Opening Virgin
Amaryllis Gacioppo

We were up around five thousand metres when I started to vomit. Not the kind I was good at. The violent kind. The kind that left me hanging over the bowl, all strings of bitter yellow. That’s how you found me. On my hands and knees with my hair across my face.

Fiction
Soroche
Jane O'Sullivan

We were up around five thousand metres when I started to vomit. Not the kind I was good at. The violent kind. The kind that left me hanging over the bowl, all strings of bitter yellow. That’s how you found me. On my hands and knees with my hair across my face.

Memoir
This Must Be Very Strange
Hila Shachar

One of the things about having synaesthesia that I’ve only become aware of in the past few years is that I smell certain music. There is a scene in Robert Guédiguian’s film L’Armée du crime (2009) that suddenly and loudly inserts klezmer music as it shows the actors throwing down a bright-red poster from a bridge.

Poetry
Makeshift Drinks in a Celebratory Garden
Alicia Sometimes

verses of conversation
the ease of company
writers sculpting novels on the fly
linearity of noise
a climate of clanking liqueurs

Essays
Vierge Ouvrante, Opening Virgin
Amaryllis Gacioppo
Moving on U.p.p
Michael Winkler
Australia in Three Books
Maks Sipowicz
Mud
Elizabeth Humphrys
The Whiff of Corruption
Ben Eltham
Adventures in the new Sobriety
Yves Rees
Fiction
Soroche
Jane O'Sullivan
Sleepers
James Bradley
Skin and Scale
Michelle See-Tho
The Visible Heart
Karen Wyld
Zu, or Part Thereof
Ouyang Yu
The Cameleer
Christopher Raja
Memoir
This Must Be Very Strange
Hila Shachar
How My Black and Indigenous Grandparents Remind Me of My White Privilege
Natalia Figueroa Barroso
Scripture of the Heaviest Kind
Madison Griffiths
Gulp, Swallow
Brooke Boland
Leavings
Jessica L. Wilkinson
Meeting Selena
Sue Hall Pyke
Poetry
Makeshift Drinks in a Celebratory Garden
Alicia Sometimes
Exchange
Ben Qin
Night Fish
Meredi Ortega
This Room
Ashleigh Synnott
Closet Monster
Samuel Watson
Rain
Glenn Mcpherson

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