A literary journal is a time capsule, a forecaster, an idea.

How robust is Australia’s democracy? Exactly fifty years ago, an elected government was abruptly dismissed by a governor-general whose reasons, methods and secret correspondences have yet to be revealed in full. This season we examine how the Dismissal continues to shape Australia today. No Australian government had ever matched Gough Whitlam’s impact. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land rights. The Racial Discrimination Act. No-fault divorce. Universal healthcare. Legal aid. Equal pay for women and men. The Australian Film Commission, the Technical and Further Education Commission and the Australia Council. Blue Poles. Tripling arts funding. Ending the White Australia policy. Abolishing […]

There are times when histories need to be retold. Urgently. By us.

Energy and life and desire. Care and passion and pride. Working toward the just as a shared labour. Standing up for the artists who stand up for us. This season, Meanjin’s writers implore us to feel their words with our bodies—and savour the work of responding.

Myths and legends. Theatre, artworks, scriptures, literature, education, journalism. Lore and law.

How do you swallow a bird of prey? What is your flavour of pride? What does artistic freedom look like right now? How do you hear the politics of pop? Beware the large bandwidth malware human-hybrid Level Boss. How do we make decisions together? How does friendship change with age? Was it John? Or Not-John? Let’s rethink constitutional monarchy. Let’s rethink the Australian Constitution. Let’s rethink Australia.

Recovering language. Diagnosing democracy. Repairing with great care.

Life and death. Moments of decision. Family, inequity, memory, destruction, agency. Speak up against genocide. A mute voice has no echo. We do not honour the dead by emulating their silence. We cannot honour the living unless we are all safe.

Art and fiction is our focus this season: let’s lift our gaze, feed our spirits and gather our strengths. Because this year has tested us. It has opened our eyes, it has broken our hearts and it has exhausted us. Truth and lie, courage and cowardice, pride and shame. And the new lows we have seen this year, so far beneath shame that we shudder to comprehend… Systematically lying for deliberately cruel impact, and then crowing with impunity. The horrors of wars with genocidal intent. The violence of unrelenting colonisation.

Australia’s current moment of racial reckoning has led many established literary and arts institutions to begin engaging robustly with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, many for the first time across the past five years. While many literary and arts institutions have sought to work with Black writers and artists in the past, as a way to redress historical exclusion, often these engagements have been piecemeal, short term and still do not see First Peoples in positions of power. Being asked to guest edit one of Australia’s oldest and most esteemed literary journals is one way to address these issues, […]

What is language doing? How does it enlist us into its project? What does it presume to fix for all time? What is it constantly unsettling?

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. 孝弟也其为仁之本. 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. Ruin porn and inspiration porn. Ethical beekeeping, hydrogeology, the second person. An editor always comes in mid-conversation. The writer has crafted the piece, but the work is not yet complete; exchanges begin, text and comments, agreement and disagreement. […]