Cirrus@Austlit

'On Mondays and Thursdays through this July, the TSR team were privileged to spend time with emerging editors for our Jumpstart a Journal workshop. We invite applications to this workshop every year from participants who want to learn more about independent publishing. This year, as always, we found ourselves enjoying clever, funny, and thoughtful discussions about editorial practice, about how to deal with budgets and production timelines, and about generous, attentive reading. We discussed how to operate without sure access to grant funding, and the continual development of accessibility tools and practices. We discussed participants’ experiences of editing and being edited. We heard about their plans for publishing projects—which we can’t wait to see take shape and be realised.' (Erin McFadyen : Editorial introduction)

'Earlier this year I received the news that an old friend of mine had passed away. He’d gone at New Years—unable to bear, I guess, the symbolic turn into yet another year, yet another cycle. I spent two months not feeling this, keeping it tight under my skin; not realising how the grief was itching at me. Then, in mid-March, the sore broke open. Crying on the side of the road while waiting for take-away braised eggplant and pickled fish soup, I told my husband about Glyn and the persistent pain of not having been there, not having done something.' (Claire Albrecht : Editorial introduction)

'It’s that time of year now when life is at its roundest, the dough of the long days risen and heavy. In such conditions, it’s easy to register richness, abundance, and fruition as wholly delightful things.' (Erin McFadyen : Editorial introduction)

'There’s a purple-flowered, climbing weed somewhere in my yard at all times. We call it the ‘alien vine’ for its powerful and persistent occupation of our space, and its otherworldly ability to wind its way through walls, under the deck, up through the roof, or into the windows of the shed. Earlier this year, it twirled its way around cables towards the power pole that feeds our house. I’m not sure what it was after up there, but it unsettled me. My husband climbed into the roof cavity and found it lurking in the dark.' (Claire Albrecht : Editorial introduction)

'Amongst the reliefs felt after the result of the recent Federal election was a little sprinkle on top: we wouldn’t have to publish this celebratory issue of TSR into a world where no cause for celebration could be plausibly conceived. There is a lot for us still to want, and to demand, especially in the arts—but a small and provisional victory is a victory, and I’ll take it.' (Erin McFadyen : Editorial introduction)

'I don’t know about anyone else, but it’s only March and I’m already out of juice for 2022. It feels like everything that was put off, set aside, or marked as ‘too hard’ over the last two years has been concentrated into this new and promising year, and I for one am worn thin—like I’ve been strained of my pulp; squeezed out. But at the same time, there’s a sense of excitement in the air, and I’m starting to find it easier to refill the jug.' (Claire Albrecht : Editorial introduction)

'Last week, when a vine finally started to flower in the backyard of my new sharehouse, I recognised it as the same variety that grows on my family’s fence, at the place I consider home. My mum and I send each other pictures of the fugitive flowers—pink clusters, shining like they’ve been glazed for us to eat—to make each other’s days more beautiful.' (Erin McFadyen : Editorial introduction)

'Yesterday I saw my six year old niece for the first time in years. She sat on a car boot while I waved hi from the front of my house, unable to go and hold her to me tightly. We have only seen each other on screens for so long, and I bore the insult of having her so close, yet removed. In context, this seems like such an insignificant wound, but even the smallest needle can pierce the skin.' (Claire Albrecht : Editorial introduction)

'Eight years ago, starry-eyed and ambitious, the two of us joined the team of a very young magazine called The Suburban Review. We were readers, our job was to read submissions. Eight years later we are the outgoing Deputy Editor and Editor in Chief of TSR, and currently in the process of leaving our magazine baby in a set of capable new hands. It has been eight years of bloody hard work.' (Anupama Pilbrow : Editorial introduction)

'When it comes to curating issues, what interests me most is the resonance of a work. Such a resonance can be experienced as a trace which is carried across an issue, informing how the singular works interact. This trace may harden and crystallise or dissolve into another substance under the pressure of a particular narrative. Salt felt like a fitting theme in terms of this image of a trace, and the idea of an issue constituted of membranes, parts interconnected to create a fluid, osmotic whole.' (Zoe Kingsley : Editorial introduction)

'My favourite winter coat was a gift from my nana, a hand-me-down navy wool pea coat that had been hers and was meant to tide me over on an unplanned trip to Europe until I could buy something more suitable. My nana told me to throw it out over there, that it wasn’t worth the luggage space to bring it home. I did buy a coat when I got to London, but I never liked it as much as the navy wool one.' (Anupama Pilbrow : Editorial introduction)

'I’m a loud person. I like making noise. My favourite part of the very quiet, very sophisticated game of Boggle is the bit where I get to frantically shake the rigid plastic box of solid plastic cubes until someone tells me to stop. I like background noise. I don’t crave silence. I can sleep through anything. It just doesn’t bother me.' (Anupama Pilbrow : Editorial introduction)