Sophie Cunningham

Features new writing by Katherine Wilson, Mick Harvey, Guy Rundle, Angela Mirabito, and more. In the winter edition of Meanjin, Katherine Wilson opens the velvet curtains onto the world of steampunk, Guy Rundle considers the state's relationship to culture and the implication of that for artists, Kate Crawford retracts from the overwhelming hum of the digital age and Michael Green brings to life the painful but constructive dialogue that is taking place between coal workers and the Greens in the Latrobe valley. Sophie Cunningham talks to graphic designer Alex Stitt about his iconic 'Life. Be in it' and 'Slip Slop Slap' campaigns, and Bob Charles and Oslo Davis collaborate on a tender, illustrated piece about the calamities of love and life-threatening illness. And, as part of the Meanland project, Sherman Young tells us why he thinks digital books are here to stay but why that won't change much at all.

Alice had not expected to spend most of the twenty-first century writing about Leonard Woolf. When she stood on Morell Bridge watching fireworks explode from the rooftops of Melbourne at the start of a new millennium, she had only two thoughts. One was: the fireworks are better in Sydney. The other was: is Y2K going to be a thing? Y2K was not a thing. But there were worse disasters to come. Environmental collapse. The return of fascism. Wars. A sexual reckoning. A plague. Uncertain of what to do she picks up an unfinished project and finds herself trapped with the ghosts of writers past. What began as a novel about a member of the Bloomsbury Set, colonial administrator, publisher and husband of one the most famous English writers of the last hundred years becomes something else altogether. Complex, heartfelt, darkly funny and deeply moving, this is Sophie Cunningham’s most important book to date – a dazzlingly original novel about what it’s like to live through a time that feels like the end of days, and how we can find comfort and answers in the past.​

"While exposing the remains of Flemish fascism twenty years after the War, Wonder tracks one man's descent into madness. Victor, a bewildered teacher, pursues a mysterious woman to a castle in a remote village. There he finds himself trapped among a handful of desperate individuals still living out their collaboration with the Nazis"--Cover flap.

Bird, an artistic young African American boy, expresses himself through drawing as he struggles to understand his older brother's drug addiction and death, while a family friend, Uncle Son, provides guidance and understanding.