AustLit

'Dozens of literary journals adorn the bookshelves of my Alice Springs office. Whether I have read them from cover to cover is another matter. Usually I scan each volume like a kitehawk scavenging for prey, dive for a morsel or two, move on. Trouble is, for a writer such journals are widely considered a pathway to publication. The loosely-stacked volumes are mostly trial subscriptions, a single year of editions purchased at a discount that couldn’t be missed. Next year I ‘traded up’ to a different journal, hoping for something better, Griffith Review, The Lifted Brow, right-leaning Quadrant, left-leaning Overland, and somewhere in between, Granta.' (Introduction)