I had written this celebratory post, along with the bit on the Meanjin closure, before the heinous event in Bondi occurred. I decided that it would be morally inept though not to express my sorrow and outrage at what went down. This makes the blogpost confusing in terms of tone and events.
'Crossing' in New Anthology
One of my stories titled "Crossing" has found a second home in Professor Feiff's Trans-Dimensional Travelogue Ed. Jessica Augustsson, and the anthology looks an entertaining ride. It's my third story in a JayHenge anthology this year and the tireless team there of Jessica and Kem have been fab to work with.
"Crossing" was originally published in 2016 in the Sir Julius Vogel Award winning anthology At the Edge edited by the talented duo, Lee Murray and Dan Rabarts. The story was scheduled for a Year's Best anthology but it never eventuated due to valid reasons relating to the editor's health. At the Edge had a fabulous little run —what else would you expect from an effervescent, globetrotting promoter like Lee Murray at the helm— but the anthology eventually came to an end and is no longer in print, so it's especially a treat timing wise to see the story find a place in Professor Feiff's Trans-Dimensional Travelogue.
Astral Amusement / Zary Fekete
Grandpa’s Birthday Barbeque / Robert Runté
Triskellion’s Maze / Mike Adamson
Halfway Home / Rodrigo Culagovski
Endgame Careful, Careful / Regina Clarke
The Tourist / Don Bisdorf
In the Land of Imagination / James Rumpel
10mg Narvania® From Tranza-Pharm / Matt Bliss
Rob the Bank, Butter the Kitchen / Susann Cokal
Ten Thousand Years Walking the Godsroad / Arthur H. Manners
Prize Exhibit / James Rogers
Perfect Gift / Gustavo Bondoni
Me and Mine / Vincent H. O’Neil
A Gentleman Explorer’s Perambulation of Wooly Acres via Linear Traverse of Nonrelative Time by Means of a Bicycle, a Saysquack and a Cuckoo Clock, a New Mode of Distanceless Travel / Justin Teerlinck
Always Let Your Dragon Fly First Class / Wendy Nikel
Veracity’s Find / Stewart C Baker
Post-Apocalypse Prix Fixe / Emily Gennis
The Brown Legacy / Kris Ashton
Seaside / Mia Dalia
The View from Erebus / Michael P. Boettcher Jr.
My Best Friend’s Destination Wedding is Taking Things Way Too Far! / Robert Dawson
The Santa Shank / Terryl M. Asla and Jessica Augustsson
By Glen Abtor / Eric Del Carlo
Home Away From Home / Coira MacHaffie
The Astronaut / Glenn Dungan
The Price of Success / Jeff Pepper
The Abandoned Planets of Aediama / Miah O’Malley
Hot Potato / Liam Hogan
Jettisoned / Kevin Holochwost and Anna Varlese
Crossing / Anthony Panegyres
Confessions of a Space Tourist / Jesse Rowell
Previous Anthology Buddies
I am an unashamed nerd by nature and keep track of previous anthology buddies. Robert Dawson tops the list this time around with homes in the anthologies The Apparatus Almanac and Masque & Maelström: The Reluctant Exhumation of Edgar Allan Poe. I also shared a home with Mike Adamson, Matt Bliss, Gustav Bodoni in The Apparatus Almanac and another home with Steward C Baker, Liam Hogan and Kevin Holochwost in Masque & Maelström: The Reluctant Exhumation of Edgar Allan Poe.
Meanjin's Closure
Meanjin Quarterly has been a major stalwart on the Australian literary scene for an age. So the news of its closure saddened me. I had a story in Meanjin Quarterly in 2013. I also wrote a review of Swamplandia! by Karen Russell for Meanjin's website back when Meanjin was quite interactive online with blogs and also interviews from writers on what they were reading or recommending to read. It was especially nice to see Isobelle Carmody wax lyrical about Dreaming of Djinn Ed. Liz Grzyb in one of those reading posts.
Meanjin paid well and was a professional unit. In the edition I had a story in there was an essay that I loved and read over and again, called 'Speed and Politics' by Waleed Aly, and there was also a part of a witty essay by Estelle Tang, which managed at the end to tie in Margo Lanagan's brilliant Sea Hearts, a novel, which incidentally, and somewhat ironically, won Meanjin's playful 'tournament of books', edging out Tim Winton's Breath in a sea-themed grand finale. In the issue with my own story, my fellow fiction mates were Jane Jervis-Read, Craig Billingham and Angelina Mirabito.
Towards the end, Meanjin was hamstrung. The journal only had two staff, who I believe had part time roles. In the current climate, it's an impossibility to manage a journal of Meanjin's magnitude —especially when you see the work put into other professional journals in Australia like Overland, Island Magazine and Griffith Review— with such a small team. The editor, Esther Anatolitis and production editor, Eli McLean, did all they could, but their roles were of a Sysiphus rock-rolling nature. Due to the staffing issue, the journal also disappeared in a compararitve sense as a web and digital presence, which, whether someone likes it or not, seems integral to gain reading traction in this era. Meanjin, despite the toil and professionalism of its staffers, limped along, albeit proudly, until Melbourne University's sent in the scythe-wielding Grim Reaper
Part of me does wonder if Meanjin, which once had a reputation for balancing the humorous with the serious (which I'm passionate about in terms of writing and also reading), leant a little too much to the graver side of literature over the last decade or so.
Ulitmately though, the lack of support for staff along with a lack of promotion signalled a limited approach to what university education and meaning stand for. The closing of Meanjin was a measure judged by the dollar alone, yet with a bit of support and promotion and people power, I'm sure that Meanjin could have reinvigorated itself and become a cultural powerhouse like Overland, Island and Griffith Review are today.
There is hope. Part of me can't help but think this is the perfect opportunity for Meanjin's rebirth sometime in the future. We've seen this occur with plenty of American journals, and, who knows, a university, who believes in thoughtful inventive essays and commentary, along with stories and how they can encourage us to think, feel and entertain simultaneously, could champion Meanjin in a renaissance of sorts. A literary institution that's been celebrated for 85 years deserves better treatment. The closure, to use a term coined by a Meanjin contributor Arthur Phillips in 1950, has given me the cultural cringe.
Darkest Day in Australia During my Lifetime
Utterly disgusted by the recent shooting in Bondi.
As a nation, although relatively fortunate, we have had some dark days on Australian soil during my lifetime. At the forefront of my mind come the Tasmanian shooting and the bushfires, but the key difference to those disasters is that the Bondi shooting was fuelled by hatred rather than a deranged mind or Mother Nature.
Much of the Bondi shooting will become politicised when strong bipartisan leadership is what is actually required at present. Our gun laws, which are tight on a global level, will be rightfully tightened further. You only have to look at the US with their slack gun laws and the number of shootings to see the correlation. But this is about more than simply access to guns. Racism and bigotry have fuelled this, along with misplaced extremist ideologies that have no place here. Australian Jewry has a long and proud history, which makes this all the more awful. The fact that some equate Israeli government policy in Gaza to assign global blame to Jews is heinously wrong. People have a right to be proud of their culture and faith, but not at the expense of breeding hatred and violence against others.
Hope you're all outraged – let's not allow this vile act any chance of becoming normalised.
