AustLit

'For years now, I have listened to first-hand accounts of the dangers of being overly connected: strangers, acquaintances and friends who either lament their troubled relationship with the internet and its various contributing technologies – email, social media, smartphones, connectedness in general – or who report great benefits to their complexion and psychological health after spending time offline. I believe all these feelings to be plausible and true, even as I am sceptical about the sometimes tacit, often explicit claim that social activities carried out online are inherently less authentic.' (Introduction)

'I couldn’t move to Australia even if I wanted to, due to having two children with autism.' (Introduction) 

'There is a word I love in Italian for which there is no equivalent in English: dimenticatoio, the place for things you want to forget, or have forgotten already. You might say, for instance, that an old, cherished custom has ended up in the dimenticatoio, a concept you would likely render in English with the phrase ‘has fallen into oblivion’. However, oblivion is not a place. It’s an abstract state of being, or rather of not being. Whereas the linguistic shape of dimenticatoio - formed by the verb dimenticare, ‘to forget’, and the suffix -oio, denoting a place or container for the activity described by the root - evokes something concrete. It could be a room, or a large box. For some reason, I visualise it in my head as a cupboard. (Introduction)

'You won’t even bother to call it a funeral. ‘We are disposing of my grandfather’s body today,’ you will say. ‘Family only.’ Later that evening, on the car ride back home, you will switch on the digital copy of grandpa and the two of you will resume the conversation you were having the night before on his deathbed.' (Introduction)

'Often, when asked what I do for a living, I say I am a writer as well as a translator. It is not a word that I would use in my native language: the Italian ‘scrittore’ is far too grandiose. It implies that you have published at least one book, probably more, whereas the English word ‘writer’ covers a larger semantic field, encompassing people who write habitually for a public in various media domains, such as this journal. In turn, when I answer that question in Italian, I am more likely to call myself a ‘giornalista’ – a word that overlays poorly on the English ‘journalist’, since, due to a series of cross-borrowings and mistranslations, a journalist is not someone who writes for a journal.'  (Introduction)

'You shall know me by the books I kept.'

'I realise that it is a romantic and questionable notion, applying only to some people and in limited ways. But I live by the example of my parents, for whom books and reading were tools of emancipation.'

'Some of Overland‘s 2015 editorial team – Stephanie Convery, Toby Fitch, Jennifer Mills, Giovanni Tiso and Jacinda Woodhead – on what they’ve been reading, listening to, playing, etc.'