Esther Anatolitis

A curated collection of essays that shaped Australia's culture and society. Since the 1940s, Meanjin essays have set the national cultural agenda. Arthur Phillips' idea of 'cultural cringe' has become a household word, instantly conveying Australians' sense of place in the world while expressing our frustrations and our ambitions—yet very few of us know it came from an essay first...

Australia became a republic many years ago—culturally, if not yet constitutionally. We’ve long stopped identifying as subjects of the British Crown, relying on UK military and trade relationships, and looking to London as our lodestar. We’ve long stopped allowing the UK Parliament to override our laws, accepting imported vice-regal representatives, and even hearing from our governor-general on days of national...

Noongar writer Claire G. Coleman has created an annotated version of the constitution—and it's about to become our democracy bible. Turns out Australia has a king (I know, right), and he's planning a visit. To greet him, Jenny Hocking reflects on racism, power, and royal privilege, while Frank Bongiorno marks sixty years since The Lucky Country taunted its way into...

Embrace Australia's finest writers with Meanjin's superb summer of reading. The power of the artist has never been more crucial to our future - nor more imperilled. When mercenary technologies are deployed against writers, cultural practice is reduced to consumption, human creativity to generative 'artificial intelligence', and new work to 'content'. 'Literature and art, poetry and drama do not spring...

Light, air and the autumn wind. Good drying weather. Ethics and history and peace and war and the laundry. Taking stock. Abandoned cities, lost children, political legacies emptied of all honour. 孝弟也者、其为仁之本与. How we commemorate, and what we forget. The cost of education, the cost of living, the costs of doing nothing. Insects, birds, bulls, deer, saplings, forests, the Great...

Meanjin Winter 2023 marks a new direction for the journal. It's the first edition to reframe The Meanjin Paper as a piece by a First Nations Elder that greets us the moment we sit down to read. It's the first to introduce new sections that assess the state of the nation, welcome experiments, and cast a long gaze across one...

Summer warms us, brings us together, opens our hearts. Meanjin's writers began 2023 imploring us to get our house in order and prepare for what comes next. At the end of this momentous year, Australia's journal of record offers that perfect art-fiction focus to accompany all your summer adventures. We begin by listening. This edition's Meanjin Paper 'Yulendj Boonwurrung' is...

Embrace Australia's finest writers. Poetry is where Meanjin began, and Autumn 2024 is Meanjin's first with new Poetry Editor Jeanine Leane - be sure to include this issue in your collection! There's Tom Doig on 'Ten years on from Hazelwood- last decade's second-worst disaster'. Marcus Westbury reconfiguring capitalism in 'The agency and the equity'. A venturous interview with Peter Polites....

Meanjin writers diagnose an Australian democracy in trouble, challenging us to activate as critical thinkers and citizens—and playing with our expectations of what comes next. "Not one constitution but three constitutions in a trenchcoat" is an incisive essay by constitutional and international law experts Emily Crawford and Elisa Arcioni. Michelle Sowey looks at developing children's critical thinking, whilst Patrick Marlborough...