Meanjin Quarterly

In the September edition of Meanjin, Mike Pottenger asks whether Robin Hood was a medieval hero or Mafiosi. Carolyn Fraser writes on letterpresses and the secret life of objects. Jim Guida describes the art in skateboarding and Justin Clemens surveys the contemporary Australian art scene. Book designer Mary Callaghan gives us an insight into laying out a page of Nick...

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...

... embracing anger is a political act. This is not a personal project but a social one—being passive and perpetually afraid of your power reinforces the status quo, and I am no longer interested in that. Anger is a complex emotion, which is exactly why my child-brain suppresses it, and exactly why we as a society are afraid of it....

Part of the story of the decline in Australian journalism can be told with data and dollars. Part of it is about belief and culture - a crisis of faith. In her cover essay This Is Not Journalism, writer and journalism academic Margaret Simons takes a long hard look at both the history and current practice of Australian journalism, its...

Meanjin is Australia's leading journal of literature and ideas, now in its 81st year. In the September edition of Meanjin... The lead essay is a compelling piece from Kate Holden, looking at the great paradox of modern life—the many commonalities of human experience and our increasing isolation as atomised individuals. This comes at a time when the most pressing, even...

Summer Meanjin. Out December 1. Australia Where is the coverline for the December 2022 edition of Meanjin, Jonathan Green's last as editor. Various essays in this edition address elements of national character and direction. Historian Mark McKenna's Australia in Four Referendums looks at the recent sweep of referendum history since the momentous 1967 vote: "In 1999, we effectively told our...

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...