Yesterday I anticipated writing a short piece about the sea but instead I dived into it. The sky was clear, the day windless and warm. The beach I drove to, on the bay, is a familiar one: a short, steep incline via steps to reach the sand, biscuit-coloured in the bright sunlight, and from there the sea stretching to the blue horizon. It was more a necessity than a choice to go, to abandon writing about an enticing subject till, well, now. Yesterday I strode into the unusually calm water, up to my waist, and dived in. The experience was… [Read more]

It was this time last year that I made the decision to leave full-time employment and try and do something I’ve always wanted to do: start my own publication. When I made this decision, I had a very romantic view of how the following few months would play out. I imagined myself dressed in something bookish, like a crisp shirt, as I brainstormed ideas in notebooks over a fresh pot of coffee. I’m surrounded by publications: novels, non-fiction, magazines, immaculately designed art books. I would also finally be able to read all of the novels I have had on my… [Read more]

I recently had my very own The Slap moment. Inspired by the novel of another Greek-Australian writer, the episode left me questioning my own ‘hyphenated identity’ and pondering its portrayal in Australian literature. Like The Slap, my moment came at a suburban BBQ. My 86-year-old mum is recently widowed so to help her socialise again, I accepted a friend’s invitation and took her along with my wife and two sons. It was a family affair, with kids and sausages, but also brisket and beer. After a long day, one of the guests approached my mum, who at the time was… [Read more]

I read like a child wandering through a garden. I start out with the intent to explore within a form, or to trace a genre. I set my path, only to be distracted by unusual blooms from out of unexpected corners. I chase the shimmering wings of a dragonfly down a verdant dead end.  I become tangled in an unfurling vine. I crisscross the garden at intersecting angles and ramble in looping trails. I start the year reading new release fiction and get sidetracked by memoir and essay. I go on a tangent with novellas and poetry and I emerge… [Read more]

When I read I am too permeable. It sounds like an affectation but if I read something bad, or not even bad, just something that doesn’t excite me, something that doesn’t give me a contact high, the act of reading it takes on a kind of existential magnitude. I look up at the sky, hate myself, and ask what I am doing with my life. I’ll become depressed for days and then imagine things like becoming a florist, taking less antidepressants, taking more antidepressants, or dressing in white and joining some cult out in the hills. To stave this off,… [Read more]

The comedown each year after the Melbourne International Film Festival consists of a curious blend of relief that the onslaught of cinema has stopped and a sadness that the intensive four-films-a-day, dumplings-and-caffeine lifestyle has also come to a halt. 2017 was an exciting festival for me. For the last few years my presence has been in a primarily professional capacity as a film critic at Triple R’s Plato’s Cave programme, and last year as a mentor on MIFF’s excellent Critics Campus programme that fosters the talent and career aspirations of emerging young critics from around Australia. Before that, I spent… [Read more]

During the chat with the President, you mentioned that one of the things you missed the most during your long stay in space was pizza. Attached is a coupon for a 2-for-1 pizza deal meal at the Trump Grill (conditions apply, taxes not included) with the President’s compliments.

In the fourth Meanjin issue of 1950, Arthur Phillips delivered one the defining statements in Australian cultural writing, and gave us perhaps the most oft-quoted shorthand for our cultural behaviour … a phrase to rival the ‘lucky country’. Phillips was 50 at the time, and had been a schoolmaster at Wesley College, Melbourne, since 1927. Read Rollo Hesketh’s account of the essay and its impact here. (The note re the absence of a Meanjin editorial on the final page of the Phillips essay is well worth reading.)  

An extract from Raimond Gaita’s major essay in the September edition of Meanjin: ‘The phrase ‘the Age of Trump’ will strike some readers as mere hyperbole that, if taken seriously would undermine sober enquiry into the conditions of Trump’s rise to power. He did not come from nowhere, they will point out: Brexit, a general rise in right-wing populism, the Tea Party and the financial interests that back it and associated think tanks either preceded or were contemporaneous with his rise to power. They facilitated it and, in the case of some business interests, may even have engineered it. Other… [Read more]