AustLit

'Sometimes, we all need to get away...

'From mermaids and space matriarchs to fresh starts and flights of fancy, Escape Routes explores what it means to break out and break free.

'Featuring new work from Behrouz Boochani, Kim Scott, Peggy Frew, Natalie Kon-yu, David Ritter and Alice Gorman, plus the four winners of Griffith Review's inaugural Emerging Voices competition Declan Fry, Alison Gibbs, Vijay Khurana and Andrew Roff, Griffith Review 74: Escape Routes takes us across borders to places once out of reach, heading over the horizon to access other worlds.' (Publication summary)

'There’s no place like utopia.

'What are the possibilities and pitfalls of imagining a better future? Hey, Utopia! explores the ramifications of Thomas More's term in a range of contexts: the possible and the improbable, the out of reach and almost realised.

'Edited by Ashley Hay and featuring work by Sarah Sentilles, Thurston Moore & John Kinsella, Ellen van Neervan, Alex Cothren, Fiona Foley and Lea McInerney, Griffith Review 73 looks into visions past and present, those with potential and those that proved punishing.' (Publication summary)

'IN THE FIRST months of 2020, the vibrations of the Earth changed. As monitored by a global network of seismologists, the average daily displacement of the surface of the planet – measured in nanometres, or increments of one billionth of a metre – fell around the world, from Nepal to Barcelona to Brussels. In Enshi, in China’s Hubei province, and in New York City, average ground displacement fell to less than one nanometre from pre-pandemic levels of 3.25 nm and 1.75 nm respectively'. (Ashley Hay : Introduction) 

'As the world teeters between old and new ways of doing, can we remake the balance between what we need and what we nurture? Can we forge a new equilibrium to sustain us into the twenty-first century?

'Having challenged so much – social practices and social structures, habits of mind and habits of leisure – will the pandemic leave a lasting legacy on how we shape the world? Griffith Review 71: Remaking the Balance examines how our natural, economic and cultural systems might be refashioned post-pandemic: will it be a return to business as usual, or can we reinvent our relationship with all that is animal, vegetable and mineral to create a more sustainable future?

'Edited by Ashley Hay, Remaking the Balance looks at how we can do more with what we have, and features leading writers and thinkers, including Gabrielle Chan, Clare Wright, Matthew Evans, Sophie Cunningham, Inga Simpson, John Kinsella,  Declan Fry, plus and exclusive Q&A with Barbara Kingsolver.' (Publication summary)

'Griffith Review‘s annual showcase of the best of Australian new writing presents stories of inner lives, resilience and potential realised.

'It features the four winners of our annual novella competition – Rhianna Boyle, Claire G Coleman, Mikele Prestia and Kate Veitch – as well as exciting new work from Thomas Major, Kristina Olsson, Adam Thompson, Linda Neil and Allanah Hunt. There’s new poetry from a compelling range of vital Australian voices, and the first in an ongoing series of pieces that will feature online over December and January, The Elemental Summer, from award-winning climate scientist Joëlle Gergis.' (Publication summary)

'As Europe is thrown into sharp relief by a devastating pandemic, Griffith Review 69: The European Exchange explores the deep and complex relationships between Europe and Australia, and discusses how Australians of many backgrounds have contributed to a longstanding dialogue that enriches both continents.' (Publication summary)

'From our first experiences to our last, institutions structure our world – through education and medicine to politics, justice, civics and religion. But in recent years even the most entrenched of institutions are seemingly on the edge of implosion. Either through deliberate political attacks or as an effect of wider disruption, new social forces have issued a comprehensive challenge to the established order.

'Does this new uncertainty mark a profound loss of trust in how our society is organised and how it operates? Might this be an opportunity for thoroughgoing reform to regain lost legitimacy, or does it mark an end-point for a social structure that is no longer tenable in the twenty-first century? Can institutions adapt? Can trust be rebuilt? Or will new forms of social organisation eventuate from this gathering sense of crisis?' (Editorial)

'Griffith Review presents its annual showcase of the country's leading writers of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. The Light Ascending features new work from Holly Ringland, Julienne van Loon, Mirandi Riwoe, Allanah Hunt, Krissy Kneen and Pat Hoffie, as well as inspiring new work from Australia's leading poets.

'The residents of a seaside town find their dreams perturbed after a young woman serves them candies at the local market; an Aboriginal family is forced to deal with the consequences of the death of a loved one in custody; the model for a celebrated canvas by Paul Gauguin reveals the harsh undertone of exploitation behind the artist's work; a woman experiencing a post-accident coma ebbs back and forth through the currents of her life.

'Edited by Ashley Hay, Griffith Review 66: The Light Ascending – The Novella Project VII presents new work that challenges, celebrates, questions and critiques.' 

'What is it about crime stories that make people hunger for them? The volume of content produced in these genres – from the pages of mysteries and thrillers to audio and visual dramas and reconstructions – hints at a primal and deeply ingrained fascination with the darker side of human nature. While crime fiction has long held appeal for the reading public, the ways that crimes play out in the real world are often more complex, compelling and shocking than the most complicated imagined plots.

'Griffith Review 65: Crimes and Punishments tells stories of reform and possibility from inside our institutions, from the greatest to the smallest of their participants. It tells stories of state-sanctioned violence, of justice after decades of systematic failures and betrayals, of truths, lies and assumptions, and of the ones that get away.' (Issue summary)

'There is something seductive about aircraft vapour trails, those long streaks – ice, carbon dioxide, soot and metal – that slice the sky. I’ve often wondered what the first person who noticed one thought it was, or what they’d look like to someone who didn’t know airplanes existed. Perhaps magical: linear clouds being drawn straight onto the blue; a symmetrical interruption to the random shapes of clouds. Or perhaps they’d be so unheimlich as to be cause for alarm.' (Ashley Hay: Introduction : Seeing through the digital haze : New perspectives for a new age)

'The world is full of beautiful places. Beaches and oceans, cliffs, forests, mountains and valleys, deserts, rivers, islands, harbours and bays. Places where the sky is a perfect half dome, and others where it is pinched between mountains and buildings. These beautiful places have the power to inspire and delight, to provide respite and solace. They are depicted by artists and evoked by poets, and in some cultures assume a spiritual significance beyond their physicality. We flock to them in increasing numbers, maybe sensing that they will not always be there.'  (On suicide watch? The enduring power of nature, Julianne Schultz : Introduction)

'In 2017, Australia said ‘Yes’ to same-sex marriage – a momentous event that confirmed the nation’s appetite for change and equality.

'Griffith Review 62: All Being Equal marks that event with a selection of stories that predate, anticipate and celebrate that historic moment: stories of love and despair; stories of families, protest and war.

'Edited by Ashley Hay, it features the winners of the sixth novella project, and maps the richness and complexity of Australia past and present.' (Introduction)

'Australia was the last continent to experience the transformation wrought by new settlers arriving to make it their own. For centuries, explorers had set forth to discover lands which others already called home, but that were conquered and renamed by European seafarers. When King George III dispatched the First Fleet to Sydney in 1787, to accommodate prisoners no longer welcome in the newly independent United States, the history of British settlement (and Indigenous displacement) commenced. Reduced to a percentage on the scale of human occupation of this land, the past two hundred and thirty years would disappear – a number so small it would not even register as a rounding error. But over this short time it has become home to millions who together have forged a new Australian identity.' (Editorial introduction)

'INSPIRED by the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and featuring outstanding Indigenous writers, Renewed Promise is an urgent, nuanced and robust call to listen, hear and respond to questions of constitutional recognition.

'More than two centuries after European settlers arrived, the need to find an honourable way to recognise and celebrate the unique history of this country as home to the oldest living civilisation is long overdue. A Makaratta Commission is the preferred way to do this, to make agreements and enable truth-telling about our history.

'Are we ready to make peace and devise firmer ground for laws, policies and outcomes that improve Indigenous and non-Indigenous life in Australia? With this special edition, Griffith Review excavates history and re-imagines the future, while not forgetting the urgencies of the present.

'Published with the support of QUT' (Publicaton summary)

'At the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast in April, athletes from countries that were once a part of the British Empire will battle for gold—but is the Commonwealth of Nations more than a legacy of another age?

'At a time of geopolitical uncertainty, the Commonwealth is poised to play a major role as a values-based network that represents a third of the world’s population. Whether this group can exercise real power and influence will be determined in 2018. The old empires are long gone but, in the wake of Brexit and the rise of China and India, the shape of a new world order remains unclear.

'Commonwealth Now features writers from around the world who explore the contemporary experience of Commonwealth citizens: reconciling the past, confronting new challenges, and opening new exchanges to create a sustainable and equitable future.' (Publication summary)

'This issue of Australia's most awarded quarterly is about making sense of the populist moment we are living in and includes essays about building a conscience, climate-change deniers, obstructive bureaucracy, religious cults and the enduring kindness of strangers.'  (Publication summary)

'Millennials are making their mark on a world that is profoundly different to the one their parents knew.

'Millennials, those born in the final decades of the twentieth century, have had bad press for a long time. Now they are fighting back as they come of age in a world radically changed from that experienced by previous generations.

'Even the oldest were still in primary school when the Soviet Union collapsed, when deregulation swept the West and much of the postwar consensus was jettisoned, when the Kyoto Protocol was signed and when the internet became a reality and the world shrank. They were in their teens when the World Trade Center collapsed, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan produced a new world order; when climate-change sceptics and shock jocks poisoned public debate; when the first dot-com boom crashed, China experimented with capitalism and revived consumerism, the global financial crisis pushed capitalism to the brink, and Facebook was born.

'The challenges this generation now face are great – political uncertainty, climate change, globalisation and economic stagnation have changed the rules of the game.

'This is the best educated, most connected generation ever, but the world they live in does not offer easy pathways – inequality is rife and traditional doors are closed. Some millennials are detached and disillusioned, but others are coming up with innovative ideas, experimenting with new ways to live and work. Their vision and energy will shape the future.

'This special edition of Griffith Review is devoted to the challenges and opportunities this generation is facing and embracing. It is co-edited by Julianne Schultz and Jerath Head.' (Website abstract)

'As the industrial model that shaped twentieth-century South Australia is replaced by an uncertain future, now more than ever the state needs to draw on the strengths of its past in order to move ahead.

'South Australia has always demonstrated a willingness to challenge prevailing sentiments, experiment, boldly innovate and take a national lead – and as a result has produced a disproportionate number of leaders in business, science, the arts and public policy.

'Now, on the cusp of change, the state needs to draw on its talent for experiment and innovation in order to thrive in an increasingly competitive world. State of Hope explores the economic, social, environmental and cultural challenges facing South Australia, and the possibilities of renewal and revitalisation. It celebrates the unselfconscious willingness that hope enables.

'State of Hope is co-edited by Julianne Schultz and Patrick Allington. ' (Publication summary)

'Griffith Review once again showcases some of the best new Australian fiction with its fourth novella competition, Earthly Delights.' (Publication abstract)