My father taught me how to read English long before any schoolteacher could. While I was too young to remember the process and how it was that I came to read, my mother tells me that most days during my toddler years Dad would prop me up on his thigh, and with newspaper in hand, he’d point to the various newspaper headlines; slowly reading both letters and words aloud, before encouraging me to echo his voice and actions. I can imagine my father’s Black hand and his utilitarian index finger pointing to the bold letters on the crisp and creamy […]

How is it that Martin Scorsese’s declaration, in an early October interview with Empire, that Marvel movies ‘aren’t cinema’ contained sufficient kindling to fuel a conversation in which responses were still being reported seven weeks later? The length of this conversation became its most remarkable feature, seeming to entail the logic that permitted its perpetual extension. This essay is not meant to further extend that debate as such, but to wonder at the cultural obsession it models. Because the question of whether a particular object can be accurately described as art tends to be less interesting than our obsession with […]

Nearly sixty years ago Sir Robert Menzies, Leader of the Liberal Party and Prime Minister of Australia, was trying to do a secret deal with his British counterpart, Harold Macmillan, for the supply of nuclear weapons to Australia, a deal he was keen to see done before the treaty banning atmospheric nuclear tests came into effect. A formerly Top Secret file has been lying on the open shelves of the UK Public Records Office and now its National Archives since 1993. Labelled Nuclear Capability in Australia it opens with a letter from Prime Minister Robert Menzies to his British counterpart, […]

It’s the end of a big, big year, in words and ideas…climate change, gender, race, citizenship, sexuality, freedom…they all have people talking and writers writing. Ward off the end of 2019 days…Join us for a night of readings from some of the brightest voices in Australian writing. You’ll hear from Meanjin authors: Adolfo Aranjuez Alice Bishop Harry Saddler Belinda Rule Maja Amanita Khalid Warsame Guy Rundle Shu-Ling Chua Madison Griffiths Hollen Singleton Fatima Measham Raise a glass… and maybe even buy a magazine! When: Thursday December 12, 2019, 7 – 9pm Where: The Union Club Hotel, Fitzroy Click here for […]