AustLit

'Island’s long, rich history and the legacy of its previous editors are at my shoulder as I send this, my first issue as Managing Editor, to print. Hundreds of hopeful writers submit to every issue of Island but there is space for only a handful in the magazine. As outgoing Nonfiction Editor Anna-Spargo Ryan says, the ones you read here are the ones that set us alight; the ‘rare and rich treasures ... that can speak of this moment’ (thank you, Judith Abell). This is Australia thinking about how colonialism plays out here and abroad, about past and future bushfires, about safety and bravery, about today’s children and the world they’ll grow up in. All of it is about why words matter, about why literature matters, about how we imagine and change the world through writing and storytelling. Thank you to everyone who offered us your work, and thank you for reading.' (Editorial introduction)

— Jane Rawson, Managing Editor

'In this first issue of Island for 2023, we’re proud to include all the shortlisted entries from the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize. Congratulations to all the poets and our hardworking judges! Jane Rawson joins our team as Fiction Editor for 2023, and we’re delighted to have her on board. In this issue, two young Tasmanian writers are inspired by the ‘Island Conversations’ project, curated by Danielle Wood, which connects emerging Tasmanian writers with works from Island’s extensive archive. One of these new pieces responds to a poem by Les Murray that appeared in Island in 1981. Such are the riches in our back catalogue! This issue also presents the second work in Island’s graphic narratives series, curated by Joshua Santospirito, and our usual complement of excellent new essays and stories.' (Publication summary)

'Each issue of Island is a privilege to produce and is a testament to a community of talented creatives who can transform ideas into actions and onto the pages in front of you. In this issue, in addition to our usual complement of great new fiction, nonfiction, poetry and arts features, I’m delighted to see the first fruits emerging from two special projects curated by long-time Island advocates: ‘Island Conversations’ curated by Danielle Wood (see Danielle’s introduction on p96), and Island’s ‘Graphic Narratives’ project curated by Joshua Santospirito. Both projects will extend across the three print issues of 2023, so you can expect plenty more great writing and art in Island 167, 168 and 169. Consider taking out a subscription so that you can enjoy the journey with us. Sadly, this is Ben Walter’s last issue as our Fiction Editor. Ben has brought so much to the team, also having been our inaugural Online Editor and curating Island’s nature writing project. We will miss him.' (Editorial introduction)

'This issue includes the winning and shortlisted entries from this year’s Island Nonfiction Prize. These essays thoughtfully explore our relationships with art, illness, sexuality and nature in compelling and beautiful writing.

'Island 165 is also packed with excellent new poetry and fiction that will startle, captivate, inspire and move you. You’ll even be intrigued by a story told through receipts, internet searches and playlists! 

'Along with features on three wonderful painters, we bring you a taste of a large, timely artistic project: water[shed], in which 50 artists respond to the 50th anniversary of the inundation of Tasmania’s jewel-like original Lake Pedder. Enjoy' (Publication summary)

(Publication abstract)

'There are so many ideas in this issue that have moved me, gnawed at me and floated around in my head for the many months we’ve worked to bring these writings and artworks to you. At the time of going to print, COP26 was only a week away, so it seemed fitting to begin this issue with Harriet Riley’s ‘Climate Girls’ and an image of Bristol’s massive mural of perhaps the most outspoken one. (If you haven’t heard Greta Thunberg’s ‘blah blah blah’ speech, do look it up.) It struck me how often climate impacts loomed in this issue, whether front and centre as in Harriet Riley’s and Joan Fleming’s essays, or as a malevolent force in the background – from Ivy Ireland’s dying trees and struggling nasturtiums to Claire Corbett’s experience of being far from home in a wintry Europe while bushfire raged in New South Wales. The term ‘apocalypse’ rolls off the tongue so regularly now, but the word has a broad meaning: catastrophic destruction, disaster and endings, yes, but also revelation, disclosure, discovery. This issue covers the spectrum of ‘the various apocalypses of a life’ – tragedy, loss, illness, but also strange visions, transformations, uncertainty and the connecting power of love.' (Publication introduction)

'My first encounter with an Australian poem, after arriving in Tasmania as an overseas immigrant teenager, was Gwen Harwood’s ‘Barn Owl’ (the devastating but beautiful first part of ‘Father and Child’). I have never forgotten it. Gwen Harwood, who would have turned 100 in 2020, remains Tasmania’s most recognised poet. It has been a pleasure to be able to run the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize competition in 2020/21, and we thank the Cultural Fund of the Copyright Agency and The Hobart Bookshop for sponsoring the prize. Enjoy the five fine poems in this issue, selected by Island's poetry editor Lisa Gorton, Lachlan Brown and Bella Li from more than 300 submitted for judging. Another very special inclusion in this issue is ‘If These Halls Could Talk’ – a set of 10 creative responses to place and community in collaboration with Tasmania’s Ten Days on the Island festival. We hope you enjoy this virtual literary trip around the island along with stories, essays, poems and art from many remarkable Australian creatives.' (Vern Field, Publication introduction)

'This is the first issue put together by our refreshed editorial team of Anna Spargo-Ryan (nonfiction), Ben Walter (fiction), Lisa Gorton (poetry) and Judith Abell (art features). We are thrilled to have them on board. They bring such enthusiasm, energy and commitment to their task, and have delivered selections that are richly diverse and worthy.

' Here you’ll find poems about fires, bodies, art and violence – including some that recall the summer’s fires and others that resonate with the confinement of these isolated days. You’ll also find thoughtful essays about the arts in this time of crisis, but also about ideas as important now as ever, such as togetherness, curiosity, love and the deep solace to be found in nature. There’s fresh, funny, clever and shocking fiction here that will take you on a dizzying ride through far-flung hotel rooms (how distant they seem right now!), the comic drama of suburban renovations, the strange world of the workplace and the bizarre one of reality TV crime drama, the mysteries of childhood, and one of the darkest great-aunts you’ll ever meet. As always, our art features enrich the issue, and this time they coalesce around various sites and forms of tragedy and extinction – from Julie Gough’s Tense Past, to Lucienne Rickard’s Extinction Studies and Selena de Carvalho’s Beware of Imposters (the secret life of flowers) – all of them urging us to attend to what has been lost and what can yet be lost. We hope that these voices will inspire, entertain and comfort you in our uncertain and vulnerable times.' (https://islandmag.com/issue159)

'Through writing the classic cautionary tale of The Lorax, Theodor Seuss Geisel (aka Dr Seuss) communicated a potent message to countless children: text holds power. As the Lorax says, 'I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues'.

'Almost half a century has passed since its publication, but the book's messages remain all too relevant. Like the entrepreneurial capitalist Once-ler, we too might feel some sense of loss when corporate greed and rampant consumerism force our equivalents of the Bar-ba-loots to go ... but 'business is business! And business must grow'.' (Editorial introduction)

'Issue 157 kicks off our 40th anniversary year. That’s a big milestone for a small, not-for-profit organisation. But rather than congratulating ourselves, we’d like to congratulate you. We couldn’t have got this far without you. Thank you for helping keep the Island journey alive.

'In this issue, we celebrate Island’s vision - of speaking both from and to the local, the national and the global - by reflecting on journeys, on the relationship between home and away, on the distinctiveness of place, and on islands near and far. There are new worlds to discover in every poem, every story, every page. As you explore between the covers of this issue, we hope you can carve out a little space and time to see the world differently.' (Publication summary)

'Welcome again to the island of print. If this isn't your first visit to the island, you may notice that we've made some slight changes to the magazine for easier reading. We promise that the content will continue to 'spark joy', even if our new size challenges the perfect alignment of your collection of back issues from 2013.' (Editorial introduction)

'By the time you hold this issue of Island, we'll be collating and considering the responses to our first major survey of readers in a number of years. The online survey closes on 1 September 2018 but if you miss this chance to share your views, you're welcome to contact us by email because we value the feedback of our readers and we want to create the magazine you want to read. As former editor Matthew Lamb wrote in Island 142, 'it is readers who close the circuit created by writers and their works, thereby sparking the light of literature. It is readers who turn writers into authors, and their words into essays. into fiction, into poetry'  (Vern Field : Introduction)

'More days than not, I drive the Channel Highway south of Hobart: kids' after-school obligations, stockfeed to collect, an Island meeting in town or an 'in conversation' to run at Fullers Bookshop. The narrow curves of the road, the insane insouciance of overtaking utes, the dazzling vistas that open towards Bruny Island have already become habitual, a matter of muscle memory. The most notable thing about Oyster Cove, which I pass between the villages of Kettering and Snug, is that the farm shop there is the best place to buy apples. It's also a mobile phone black spot. ' (Geordie Williamson : Editorial introduction)

I lost my way in the spaghetti junction of highway roadworks into which Melbourne's M2 currently devolves and found myself heading away from my destination, towards Footscray. The family car was so full of belongings - garden tools, blankets, artworks deemed too sentimentally precious to leave to the removalists- that I couldn't use the rear-view mirror. I doubled back, then tripled back, in an effort to recover the route. Eventually I abandoned the blue dot on Google Maps, always a crucial few hundred metres out when it comes to junction exits, and drove by a more Zen method: swapping to a compass app and heading due south, feeling my way to Port Melbourne and the ferry terminal.' (Geordie Williamson, Editorial introduction)

'Remember when I was coming back from the Antarctic on that orange icebreaker, and a friend told me that he could smell home - Tassie. I told him that The Island just makes me feel so bloody sad and it rips up my insides and it's not my home. He looked at me for a while and then said, 'Tasmania's not like that at all. What you need is a welcome to country.'

'These lines are from a letter by author Favel Parrett. She's referring to the moment of return to Hobart from a journey made possible by the Australian Antarctic Arts Fellowship - she'd been researching the novel which would become When the Night Comes. The question of why a Tasmanian would feel this way about her home state is answered by the pages that follow, though the fact that the letter is addressed to Truganini - famously and erroneously considered the last Indigenous Tasmanian, who died in Hobart in 1876 - is explanation enough.' (Editorial Introduction)