For over 80 years, Meanjin has fostered a rich and rigorous national conversation by remaining true to its founding principles: ‘to talk poetry’, ‘to work for a healthy climate of opinion and literary activity’, and ‘to make clear the connection between art and politics.’ Whether in poetry, fiction, essay, memoir or experimentation, Meanjin writers seek audiences who are active contributors to the public spaces we all make together: readers who enjoy critical discussion and—to continue in Founding Editor Clem Christesen’s words—who ask Meanjin writers ‘to reveal and clarify our life by showing it to us though a vision different from ours and deeper.’
Publication and sales of Meanjin are currently paused as custodianship transfers from Melbourne University Publishing to the Queensland University of Technology. New work – online and also in new print editions to complement Meanjin’s rich collection of back issues – will be available from late 2026 and going forward.
Acknowledgement of Country
Meanjin’s work is undertaken primarily on the sovereign lands of the Turrbal and Yugara people. We honour and respect Elders past and present, their lores, customs and creation spirits; their custodianship, wisdom and provocations. These lands, as all lands across this continent, have always been places of teaching, research and learning, and story.
History
When Clem Christensen founded the journal in Magandjin (Brisbane) in 1940, he gave it the Yugara name Meanjin to relate ‘culture … to place’. Meanjin moved to Melbourne in 1945 at the invitation of the University of Melbourne, and, in early 2008, became an editorially independent imprint of Melbourne University Publishing. This arrangement ended in September 2025, and custodianship of the journal was transferred to the Queensland University of Technology in early 2026. Publication of new digital and print work will resume later in 2026.
After starting out as a journal of poetry, from its early years Christesen ensured that Meanjin reflected the breadth of contemporary thinking, be it on literature, other art forms, or the broader issues of the times. This approach has been strengthened under its subsequent editors—Jim Davidson, Judith Brett, Jenny Lee, Christina Thompson, Stephanie Holt, Ian Britain, Sophie Cunningham, Sally Heath, Zora Sanders, Jonathan Green, and Esther Anatolitis. In April 2026, Ashley Hay took up the role of Establishing Editor at QUT to facilitate the journal’s relocation and regeneration, ahead of the appointment of an ongoing editor later that year.
Past contributors to Meanjin include Australian writers Judith Wright, Kylie Tennant, Manning Clark, Vance & Nettie Palmer, A D Hope, Dymphna Cusack, Martin Boyd, Alan Marshall, Dorothy Hewett, Peter Singer, Vincent Buckley, Donald Horne, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Patrick White, Gwen Harwood, Bruce Dawe, David Malouf, Humphrey McQueen, Jack Hibberd, Bruce Pascoe, Roberta Sykes, Helen Garner, π.O., Alex Miller, Frank Moorhouse, John Morrison, Sarah Holland-Batt, Hal Porter, Rodney Hall, A A Phillips, Alexis Wright, Peter Carey, Alice Pung, Michelle de Kretser, J M Coetzee, Carmen Callil, Claire G. Coleman and Dorothy Porter. International authors published include Jean-Paul Sartre, and Kurt Vonnegut.
In Meanjin 82.2 Winter 2023, Gaja Kerry Charlton (Yagarabul and Gabi Gabi Elder, traditional owner, and Indigenous Industry Fellow at the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Queensland) published The Meanjin Paper titled ‘Makunschan, Meeanjan, Miganchan, Meanjan, Magandjin’, where she presented family, cultural and linguistic context for the use of the word ‘meanjin’. This was the first of the new series of Meanjin Papers that opened each subsequent edition through to Meanjin 84.4 Summer 2025, ensuring that Meanjin opened by honouring and learning from First Nations Elders.
In 2015, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Meanjin, the rare first edition was republished. The final edition of Meanjin produced by Melbourne University Publishing was Meanjin 84.4 which included Gaja Kerry Charlton’s reflection on the first in that new series of Meanjin Papers. The next volume, Meanjin 85, will be published from Magandjin (Brisbane) in late 2026.