It takes a tremendous team of collaborators to make each Meanjin happen. Some of us work a few days a week, others just a few hours per edition.
| Editor Esther Anatolitis Deputy Editor Poetry Editor Incoming Poetry Editor Reviews Editor | Typesetter Patrick Cannon Copyeditor Proofreader Designer Archives Assistant IT Consultant |
For more about us, as well as a list of past Meanjin editors, read on—
About us
| Editor Esther Anatolitis Σταθία Ανατολίτη | Esther Anatolitis is one of Australia’s most influential advocates for arts and culture. With two decades in creative and media leadership, she is a highly respected champion of artists’ voices, with extensive literary sector experience: she is a former CEO of Express Media and publisher of Voiceworks, an Emerging Writers’ Festival founder, a Small Press Network founding partner, and a former Melbourne Writers Festival programming committee member. Working across multiple languages, she has edited a diverse range of print and online publications. Esther has curated talks programs, honoured many a PEN empty chair, and mentored zine makers, independent publishers and literary festival directors. A prolific writer and commentator, Esther is one of the nation’s most published arts leaders; her book Place, Practice, Politics was published in 2022, and her work is archived at estheranatolitis.net. Esther is Hon A/Prof at RMIT School of Art, a member of the National Gallery of Australia Governing Council, and a long-time reader, subscriber and contributor to Meanjin. |
| Deputy Editor Fiction Editor Tess Smurthwaite | Tess Smurthwaite is an editor and arts management professional based in Melbourne. She has been Deputy Editor and Fiction Editor of Meanjin since 2016, before which she worked for Melbourne University Publishing, the Mietta Song Competition and the Abbotsford Convent Foundation. She has edited several Australian novels and short story collections in a freelance capacity, and also works as a tutor for students of publishing and editing. |
| Poetry Editor Bronwyn Lea | Bronwyn Lea is the author of Flight Animals (UQP, 2001) which won the Wesley Michel Wright Prize for Poetry, the Fellowship of Australian Writers Anne Elder Award, and was shortlisted for five national awards. Her poems have won a number of prizes, including the Arts Queensland Poetry Prize and the Somerset National Poetry Prize, and have been widely published, anthologised, and translated into French, Spanish and Chinese. Bronwyn is series editor, with Martin Duwell, of UQP’s Best Australian Poetry annual anthology. Her most recent collection of poems is The Other Way Out (Giramondo, 2008). She lives in Brisbane and has been Poetry Editor since 2016, with Meanjin 82.4 Summer 2023 her final edition. |
| Incoming Poetry Editor Jeanine Leane | Jeanine Leane is a Wiradjuri writer, poet and academic from south-west New South Wales. Her first volume of poetry, Dark Secrets After Dreaming: A.D. 1887-1961, won the Scanlon Prize for Indigenous Poetry. Her first novel, Purple Threads, won the David Unaipon Award, and has recently been republished in the UQP First Nations Classics series. Jeanine has published widely in the area of Aboriginal literature, writing otherness and creative nonfiction. For many years Jeanine has taught Creative Writing and Aboriginal Literature at the University of Melbourne. She was the recipient of the University of Canberra Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Poetry Prize, and she has won the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Prize for Poetry twice. Jeanine has been the recipient of a Red Room Poetry Fellowship and two Australian Research Council (ARC) Fellowships. Most recently she was announced as the winner of Australia’s richest poetry prize, the David Harold Tribe Poetry Award for an original unpublished poem. Jeanine’s first edition as Poetry Editor is Meanjin 83.1 Autumn 2024. |
| Reviews Editor Cher Tan | Cher Tan is an essayist and critic living and working on unceded Wurundjeri land. Her work has appeared in the Sydney Review of Books, Hyperallergic, Cordite, Runway Journal, Art Guide Australia, Overland, Disclaimer Journaland The Age, amongst others. Elsewhere, she is a book columnist at ABC and an editor at LIMINAL. Her debut essay collection, Peripathetic: Notes on (Un)belonging, is forthcoming with NewSouth Publishing. |
| Typesetter Patrick Cannon | Pat Cannon is a third-generation typesetter. He has freelanced for over thirty years for government departments, newspapers and book publishers, and has typeset Meanjin for the past decade. |
| Copyeditor Jack Callil | Jack Callil is the opinion and production editor of Crikey. He was previously digital editor of Australian Book Review. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Saturday Paper, The Monthly, and VICE, among others. He was a finalist for the 2020 Walkley–Pascall Prize for Arts Criticism, and was an emerging culture critic for The Age/Sydney Morning Herald. |
| Proofreader Nikki Lusk | Nikki Lusk is a freelance book editor and proofreader who lives on Gubbi Gubbi/Kabi Kabi Country. Nikki is a member of the Brisbane Free University’s Radical Reading Group, and organises the Magandjin-based chapter of the Incendium Radical Library’s prison solidarity network, where people meet up monthly to write letters to people in prison. |
| Designer Stephen Banham letterbox.net.au | As a typographer, educator and writer centred on the social and cultural aspects of letterforms, Stephen Banham uses typography to tell stories through an array of materials & processes. Recognised internationally, his design work and writings have appeared in countless international publications. He has spoken at international events from Barcelona to Beirut, New Zealand to New York. A board member of the International Society of Typographic Designers, Stephen is Senior Lecturer in Typography at the School of Design, RMIT University. He has appeared as a typographic expert witness in the Supreme and Federal Courts of Australia. |
| Archives Assistant Emma Sutherland | Emma Sutherland curates the Meanjin Daily Reading newsletter and writes about the Quarterly’s dynamic archive collection. Elsewhere Emma researches collaborative creative practices and paratextual film histories, and is particularly interested in archive access issues. |
| IT Consultant Stilgherrian | Stilgherrian’s background is a blend of old media, new media, and computing science. He’s produced and presented radio programs and podcasts, managed a street mag, survived the first dotcom boom, and managed computer networks. Most recently he’s been writing about the politics of the internet, privacy, and cybercrime, presented his podcast The 9pm Edict, and dug deep into the realms of digital identity. |
Founding Editor
Clem Christesen (1911-2003)
Past Editors
1940-1974 Clem Christesen
1974-1982 Jim Davidson
1982-1986 Judith Brett
1987-1994 Jenny Lee
1994-1998 Christina Thompson
1998-2001 Stephanie Holt
2001-2008 Ian Britain
2008-2011 Sophie Cunningham
2011-2013 Sally Heath
2013-2015 Zora Sanders
2015-2022 Jonathan Green
2023— Esther Anatolitis
