Overland Journal

Landscape freakout #3: Our earth is not what we think - Overland literary journal Many would consider the map an artwork but as an intuiter, I resisted that temptation; I needed to see it as the tip of an iceberg. I needed to dive and resurface, dive deeper and so on.

“There is nothing further to report at this time. And I remain forever, haunted by maps.”

Our brand new #FridayFiction is LANDSCAPE FREAKOUT #3: OUR EARTH IS NOT WHAT WE THINK by Karen A Johnson.

My essay in Overland!

In it, I argue that our understanding of students' GenAI use must be situated in the anti-intellectual and anti-youth cultures of our time, which has told them that neither they nor their education matters. (1/2)

We meant to say this essay was generously supported by @copyright.com.au! Not the person we credited by accident.

Indeed! Sorry.

Australia's own ICE raids: A look at Operation Inglenook - Overland literary journal Racially-motivated raids, trans women being placed under male confinement without trial, and police-sanctioned sexual abuse are not exclusive to foreign countries or the Trump administration. They are...

“We still live in an age where migrant sex workers are portrayed as gullible and weak damsels in distress, rather than struggling, disadvantaged women just playing the cards they have.”

Natalie Feliks on Operation Inglenook and its echoes of the ICE raids in the US.

AI “cheating”, anti-intellectualism and the carceral - Overland literary journal Using GenAI is not a morally neutral act. And yet, from a criminological perspective I feel uneasy at how we understand its transgressiveness. After all, moral transgression, fault and blame are compl...

“School is no longer an environment where the active, positive presence of students is encouraged, or where the knowledge gained and labour performed within are valued.”

Mark Yin on the context behind the carceral responses to AI cheating.

Generously supported by @copyrightlibn.bsky.social's Cultural Fund.

“Revolutionary promiscuity”: loving one another in a f*cked up world - Overland literary journal Soft and fierce, utopian and practical, inscribed with beauty and strength, Love in a F*cked Up World is both an intervention and a guidebook, offering real pathways towards collective, abundant and m...

“Soft and fierce, utopian and practical, inscribed with beauty and strength, LOVE IN A F*CKED UP WORLD is both an intervention and a guidebook, offering real pathways towards a collective, abundant and more radical futures.”

Zahra Stardust reviews Dean Spade.

South Australia's algal bloom - Overland literary journal It all seems pretty bleak. On a scale that's hard to comprehend. But giving up is a disservice to the victims and a betrayal to the survivors, who need us to stop the offshore gas, seismic blasting, a...

For @copower.bsky.social, a brand new comic by Eav Brennan on South Australia's algal bloom and the “waves of death” threatening our seas.

Statement in support of Meanjin’s future - Overland literary journal We write in support of the University of Melbourne Creative Writing program and call on the University of Melbourne to protect Meanjin and the incalculable cultural wealth that it offers us all. The u...

Thanks @overlandjournal.bsky.social for publishing our letter.
overland.org.au/2025/09/stat...

Wow. What an essay by Eli McLean for @overlandjournal.bsky.social : "I had started to feel over the last few months that the ever-watchful eye of the university panopticon was sooner or later going to cast its gaze on our publishing activities"

There is no geography: a poetics of wordlessness (a response to Longfellow, anthologist) - Overland literary journal So, let’s no longer call it place and let’s think outside of time. The refugee being ignored or ostracised, or drowning in one of the oceans of the world set up as divisions of place and space, knows ...

“I do not need to name all the names of poets doing this in “Australia”, because Australia doesn’t exist.”

A brand new, extended essay on geography and poetry by John Kinsella.

“No Guernicas, no sacred places”: On the closure of Meanjin - Overland literary journal Australia’s literary culture depends for its life on its journals. Literary journals are not just clearing houses for pithy snatches of commentary and readable middlebrow fiction — they’re incubators ...

“If we’ve learned anything from the recent slew of Zionist attacks on culture in Australia, it’s that institutions — mainly universities — are often a poisoned chalice for writers and editors.”

Deputy editor Eli McLean on the closure of MEANJIN.

Where the envoy’s Islamophobia Report fails Muslims - Overland literary journal Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia, Aftab Malik, released his report, entitled A National Response to Islamophobia, last week. Below is where I believe it has failed Australian Muslims.

Sara Cheikh examines the envoy’s report on Islamophobia and finds that it “does not chart a path toward justice simply because it failed to place Australian Muslims’ grievances within the power mechanisms that created them in the first place”.

I wrote about shark nets and a very niche part of Sydney history from the other side of the fence (pun intended) for @overlandjournal.bsky.social

Fences in the sea: Australia’s neverending “shark era” - Overland literary journal Historian Bill Gammage’s warning that “fences on the ground make fences in the mind” rings in the ears as shark nets are erected along Australia's coastlines each year. The legacy of Sydney’s 1930s sh...

“Historian Bill Gammage’s warning that “fences on the ground make fences in the mind” ring in the ears as shark nets are erected along Australia's coastlines each year.”

For @copower.bsky.social, our own Natasha Seymour on Australia’s neverending “shark era”.
overland.org.au/2025/09/fenc...

Effort - Overland literary journal I walk down the road five minutes / to get the good mandarins / which are also the cheap mandarins / they’re small and there's an air pocket / between the pith so the skin / gives way beneath my thumb...

“you know it's about to get gnarly
when the lichen is fused with the asphalt”

Our latest #fridaypoem is EFFORT by Eliana Gray.

Jenny Greenteeth, reluctant monster - Overland literary journal A creature of places, not of books — that’s how we should understand Jenny Greenteeth. She once belonged to specific, forgotten, sites: the cold, dark, moorland Black Pool on the way to Butterdon Hill...

“A name once whispered across the industrial north, Jenny Greenteeth has declined into print, into kitsch.”

David Renton on the history of a cautionary creature of folklore, pointing “to the world we have made and could yet unmake.”
overland.org.au/2025/09/jenn...

An open letter by GPs for Palestine to the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners - Overland literary journal It is hard to capture the breadth and ferocity of the assault on Gaza, with every conceivable aspect of Palestinian life decimated by the Israeli military campaign. As healthcare workers, our ethics c...

An open letter by GPs for Palestine to the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners

When aid turns to murder: necropolitics in Gaza - Overland literary journal The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) launched in May 2025 to the horror of the humanitarian community. Experienced providers of aid recognised immediately that there is absolutely nothing humanitari...

“Do not be deceived by the ‘humanitarian’ label given to this militarised organisation. All funding to this militant group must be withdrawn and the organisation disbanded.”

Amy Neilson on the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and aid turning to murder.

In my pants - Overland literary journal We’re sweating. There’s so much bodily fluid in this room that the two of us together could’ve fixed the millennium drought. He’s in his forties. Or he could be nineteen. Kind of hard to tell with the...

“I didn’t get far through my call centre de-escalation training but telling someone they might punch you seems like the opposite of de-escalation. I look at him again, trying to listen to his feelings.”

From IN MY PANTS, a new story by Ismene Panaretos.

The Egg, a cricket trophy awarded to the winners of Overland vs Meanjin matches, alongside a copy of Jim Davidson's Emperor in Lilliput, the book about magazine founding editors Clem Christesen and Stephen Murray-Smith.

Since our very first issue Meanjin and Overland have been comrades, mates, rivals, and drinking buddies. The UMP board’s decision is a shockingly myopic act of cultural vandalism which will grievously harm the Australian literary community.

Labor and the end of government by consent - Overland literary journal Even though the election was won on the ground of domestic economic concerns, and the incompetency of the Liberals, it was treated as a sanctioning of this new soft authoritarianism. Since then, Labor...

“With an inflated sense of its renewed mandate, Labor seems poised to concretise its anti-democratic potential.”

Giacomo Bianchino on Australian politics and the end of government by consent.

“Proud history woven into a prouder fantasy”: Nock Loose’s radical silliness confronts a culture of noise - Overland literary journal Nock Loose is radically silly, and it is the novel’s radical silliness that had me writing notes like “finally, Western Australian realism” and “it is easier to imagine the next extinction event than ...

“In order to be silent to colonial atrocity, past and present, settler society makes as much noise as possible, especially through mythological havoc. ”

From Dan Hogan's pyrotechnic review of Patrick Malrborough's NOCK LOOSE. Part of a series of critical essays supported by @copyright.com.au.

ANU at a crossroads: between the social body and the iron cage - Overland literary journal The organic solidarity on display across ANU gives the institution its moral clarity and counterweight to a bureaucracy that risks becoming a case as hard as steel. In the last six months, ANU staff, ...

“The organic solidarity on display across ANU gives the institution its moral clarity and counterweight to a bureaucracy that risks becoming a case as hard as steel.”

Beck Pearse on an institution at a crossroads.

“… it’s to fight and erase Palestinians” - Overland literary journal While Gaza City is being systematically taken over, house by house, Australia has condemned Israel's plan to build E1 — a settlement which will cut the West Bank into two. But condemning Israel's plan...

In her latest comic for Overland, Sofia Sabbagh responds to Israel’s E1 settlement plan, illustrating a quote by American-Palestinian journalist and writer Mariam Barghouti.

If you don’t fight, you lose: what now for the CFMEU? - Overland literary journal This blue between Administration and the rank-and-file will be the definitive dispute for this generation of CFMEU members. How the battle is fought will shape the identity of the CFMEU as much as the...

“If you don’t fight, you lose”. Sarah Missen and Sam Wallman continue their ongoing examination of the state of things at the CFMEU — and answer the question of whether Mark Irving is or isn’t a werewolf.

Why we cannot be silenced - Overland literary journal We have witnessed what happens when uncomfortable truths are censored — particularly when voiced by artists, intellectuals and academics — too many times historically.  We have seen where the attempt ...

“All people deserve to live free from violence. And all victims of violence and their allies must be allowed to speak out about their experience.”

Sonia Orchard on withdrawing from the Bendigo Writers Festival.

This poem was written to perform at Fine Print Magazine's Narrative Sabotage event in July. Thanks to @overlandjournal.bsky.social for publishing a re-worked version.

I'm very new to poetry, but it felt good releasing some rightous rage.

From the river to the sea / always was always will be ✊🏾

starmight - Overland literary journal Ending genocide and apartheid is the story. Palestinian liberation is the story. / Aboriginal rights is the story. Truth, justice, treaties and land back is the story. / Global Indigenous peoples’ sol...

“The moon weeps over Palestine
weaving tears into silvery shrouds.”

From “starmight”, a new poem by K.A Ren Wyld.