Published 3 December 2025     Celebrating 85 years! Let’s look back with a critical eye—and look forward with renewed curiosity. What has publication in Meanjin meant for some of our finest writers? How has their practice developed, how has Australia evolved, and how does that first piece read today? An eclectic and impactful group of writers—including Gaja Kerry Charlton, Peter Craven, Sarah Holland-Batt, John Kinsella, Ellen van Neerven, π.O., Bruce Pascoe, Sara M. Saleh and Christos Tsiolkas—reflect with generosity on the evolution of their practice. Enriching that critical approach is our feature interview with Meanjin’s founding editor, Clem Christesen […]

Published 17 September 2025   How robust is Australian democracy? Fifty years ago, an elected government was abruptly dismissed by a governor-general whose reasons, methods and secret correspondences have never been made clear to the Australian public. This season we turn to the cultural and political impacts of 11 November 1975 that continue to shape contemporary Australia. Tom McIlroy speaks to the remaining living journalists who covered the event. Njamal man and Indigenous jurisprudence scholar Tyson Kane looks at Pine Gap – the joint Australia-US military base placed on nuclear alert during Whitlam’s prime ministership without him or the Australian […]

Published 18 June 2025 BUY | SUBSCRIBE   What is a revolution? What are the sounds of the commons, the crickets, the carpark, the quails and the creek? Who funds culture wars, and whose interests does their gamble serve? Can you dance through an entire year—and what is there to learn? This winter, Meanjin’s fiction, poetry, memoir, experiments and essays take us on new adventures.    The Meanjin Paper   ‘I AM AN INVISIBLE MAN’Djon Mundine OAM   EDITORIALEsther AnatolitisΣταθία Ανατολίτη State of the Nation Big Incel EnergyClaire G. Coleman Mind-numbing sleep-wokingLucy Hamilton Courage, anyone?Barry Jones   Fiction Cut him out of little starsGary Perkins […]

Published 19 March 2025 BUY | SUBSCRIBE   Energy and life and the body. Disappointment and passion and pride. The inexorable labour of working toward the just. The work of desire, the work of identity, the work of standing still. The work of giving life, the work of telling truth, the work of making a home. This season, Meanjin’s writers are calling us to account. What are we gambling with when we settle for what’s merely adequate? What have we already sacrificed the moment we come to realise what’s at stake? What is the price of the just? Embrace Australia’s […]

Published 2 December 2024 BUY | SUBSCRIBE   The power of the artist has never been more crucial to our future—nor more imperilled. When mercenary technologies are deployed against writers, cultural practice is reduced to consumption, human creativity to generative ‘artificial intelligence’, and new work to ‘content’. ‘Literature and art, poetry and drama do not spring into being at the word of command,’ wrote Founding Editor Clem Christesen in our very first editorial. ‘Their life is a continuous process of growing within itself, and its suppression is death.’ Since 1940, Meanjin has proudly championed the work of writers and artists. […]

Published 13 September 2024 BUY | SUBSCRIBE   Meanjin writers rethink the monarchy, the Australian constitution, and Australia itself. Poetry, fiction, memoir, essays, experiments . . . Embrace Australia’s finest writers.   The Meanjin Paper WELL, IT’S BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY, REALLY— Mike Ross   EDITORIAL Esther Anatolitis Σταθία Ανατολίτη          

Published 13 June 2024 BUY | SUBSCRIBE   Meanjin writers diagnose an Australian democracy in trouble, challenging us to activate as critical thinkers and citizens – and playing with our expectations of what comes next. Poetry, fiction, memoir, essays, experiments . . . Embrace Australia’s finest writers.   The Meanjin Paper DJAARA: THE ESSENTIAL INGREDIENT Rodney Carter   EDITORIAL Esther Anatolitis Σταθία Ανατολίτη          

Published 15 March 2024 BUY | SUBSCRIBE Poetry is where Meanjin began, and Autumn 2024 is Meanjin‘s first with new Poetry Editor Jeanine Leane – be sure to include this issue in your collection. In heavy times, we read with heavy hearts, and reflect with open minds. Embrace Australia’s finest writers.   The Meanjin Paper ILKAKELHEME AKNGAKELHEME—RESISTING ASSIMILATION Theresa Penangke Alice   EDITORIAL Esther Anatolitis Σταθία Ανατολίτη          

Published 1 December 2023 BUY | SUBSCRIBE Summer warms us, brings us together, opens our hearts. Meanjin‘s writers began 2023 imploring us to get our house in order and prepare for what comes next. At the end of this momentous year, Australia’s journal of record offers that perfect art-fiction focus to accompany all your summer adventures. The Meanjin Paper YULENDJ BOONWURRUNG N’Arwee’t Professor Carolyn Briggs   EDITORIAL Esther Anatolitis Σταθία Ανατολίτη  

Published 15 September 2023 BUY | SUBSCRIBE Devoted entirely to work by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers and artists, Meanjin 82.3 Spring 2023 is Guest-Edited by Bridget Caldwell-Bright and Eugenia Flynn, and framed around notions of cultural sovereignty and place.   The Meanjin Paper FROM THE ARCHIVES: INTERVIEW WITH KATH WALKER Oodgeroo Noonuccal Quandamooka   EDITORIAL Eugenia Flynn & Bridget Caldwell-Bright Larrakia and Tiwi & Jingili and Mudburra        

Published 15 June 2023 BUY | SUBSCRIBE Meanjin Winter 2023 marks a new direction for the journal. It’s the first edition to reframe The Meanjin Paper as a piece by a First Nations Elder that greets us the moment we sit down to read. It’s the first to introduce new sections that assess the state of the nation, welcome experiments, and cast a long gaze across one particular field. And it’s the first by new designer Stephen Banham, the internationally renowned typographer who has dedicated his career to creating a distinctly Australian graphic design language.   The Meanjin Paper MAKUNSCHAN, MEEANJAN, MIGANCHAN, […]

Published 16 March 2023 BUY | SUBSCRIBE Light, air and the autumn wind. Good drying weather. Ethics and history and peace and war and the laundry. Taking stock. Abandoned cities, lost children, political legacies emptied of all honour. 孝弟也者、其为仁之本与. How we commemorate, and what we forget. The cost of education, the cost of living, the costs of doing nothing. Insects, birds, bulls, deer, saplings, forests, the Great Barrier Reef. Ethical beekeeping, hydrogeology, the second person. Ruin porn and inspiration porn. Solarpunk and Chengyu and the Argonauts. Housing and home, love and Metta, class and compassion. Understanding where it is that […]