Cirrus@Austlit

 'This issue of Southerly captures a snapshot of Australian writing today. Stories from writers just starting out on their long apprenticeship are placed side-by-side work from Australia’s finest essayists, writers and poets. This rich and expansive issue asks what it means to write in a contemporary Australia fraught with inequality, divisiveness, and the unrelenting exploitation of country. In a special collaboration with Sydney Story Factory, which runs workshops for young and marginalised writers, this issue of Southerly includes short stories that demonstrate the vibrancy and the vision of Australia’s up-and-coming writers. Including essays from Caroline Lefevre and John Kinsella, poetry from Kevin Hart, and much, much more, ‘The Long Apprenticeship’, is an issue comprising, as ever, the best in Australian writing.' (Editorial)

'The theme of this issue, Mixed Messages, relates in the main to a thread running through the essays, all of which engage with texts that challenge the limits of genre. These challenges include the status and influence of what might be termed a secondary genre deployed by writers whose renown is based on another form: Brigitta Olubas considers the short fiction of novelist Shirley Hazzard; and Cheryl Taylor introduces the poetry of novelist Thea Astley. Kate Livett delves into the mixed media, specifically music and photography, at the core of Helen Garner’s The Children’s Bach, and Peter Kirkpatrick examines the fusion of Gothic and Romance forms in Chloe Hooper’s The Engagement, and David Brooks thinks through the miscenegy of the human and the non-human in relation to the famous scene of Derrida standing naked before his cat. Another strand in the issue is of comedy and errors and includes fiction by Debra Adelaide, John Kinsella, Mark Macrossan, Sara Bucholz, Nasrin Mahoutchi, Niki Tulk and Scott McCulloch. The poetry spans its usual wide range from the lyric to graphic experimentation and the reviews introduce some of the exciting new work published across creative and critical forms.' (Publication abstract)