Earth’s ecosystems and the atmosphere that keeps all of us alive are having a rough time of it. We humans are grappling with what that change – and, potentially, collapse – means for our future; we’re dealing with guilt, fear, sorrow and occasionally (and confusingly) joy. In Lutruwita/Tasmania, nature and our relationship with it carries particular weight. The islands of Lutruwita have historically been the site of deep conflicts over the value of nature. Is nature primarily a site of extraction, a place where humans can harvest trees, salmon, minerals, wild rivers, views and experiences? Or does nature have value in and of itself? The people of this archipelago often define our identities by where we sit on these questions, in a way that the inhabitants of Sydney or Melbourne might not. But the relationship that city dwellers have with nature carries a productive tension of its own – what does nature mean when you live among human-made things, and what does it mean to have a relationship with nature when the creatures you love are not the rainforests and charismatic fauna usually linked with that term? 

Historically, scientists and science communicators have carried much of the weight of describing crises in climate and ecosystems and proposing solutions. But there is also an important place for creative writers. Dougald Hine, British author and educator, writes that fiction, poetry and other writing can ‘hold a space in which we move from the arm’s-length knowledge of facts, figures and projections, to the kind of knowledge that we let inside us, taking the risk that it may change us. Art can give us just enough beauty to stay with the darkness, rather than flee or shut down’.   

Island has long believed in the value of creative nature writing. In 2021 and 2022, Island established a nature writing project, funded by the Tasmanian Government, offering mentorships, webinars and the publication of 18 essays on Island Online. As Online Editor Ben Walter wrote at the time, ‘Australian nature writing exists, but seems to be constantly forgotten... At a time when environmental issues are so pressing and significant, we want to give proper recognition to this form – a suite of unforgettable pieces that are unmistakably Australian nature writing’. 

And now we are delighted to announce a new Nature Writing Prize, established in partnership with Fullers Bookshop and the Tasmanian Land Conservancy. This prize offers publication in Island magazine and a one-week residency at one of the Tasmanian Land Conservancy’s stunning nature reserves, as well as a package of books from Fullers. Applications – which will take the form of a piece of nature writing – will open soon at islandmag.com/submit. We would love to see writing from all around the continent, engaging with all kinds of landscapes, including imaginary ones. We are particularly interested in works that bend the conventions of nature writing and works that engage with the rich tradition of First Nations’ critiques of settler nature writing. We can’t wait to read your entries! 

In the meantime, welcome to the latest issue of Island magazine, and I’ll hand over to our brilliant specialist editors to tell you what’s inside... 

— Jane Rawson, Editorial Manager

In poetry, everything is still with us: the pre-Socratic philosophy of Heraclitus is current – as in Graeme Miles’ ‘The thunderbolt steers all things’; so too is whatever philosophy resides in reality television, as in Alice Allan’s Horatian consideration of Real Housewife Erika Jayne. Diane Fahey captures Caspar David Friedrich’s painting of his wife in the ekphrastic ‘The Gown’, translating an image recorded centuries ago into a moment of contemporary ‘luminance’, while Jet Nikitina-Li captures the luminous scene of watching Pinky and the Brain in a domestic setting that boils over with sustaining memory. Nadia Rhook unfolds an encounter with a tree that enables inter-species exchange to emerge as subject, while in Michael Farrell’s ‘Imbroglio’, the mind comes alive: we jump across linguistic stepping stones of association: ‘I married, bad reader’, so Charlotte Brontë did not write. In Lesh Karan’s ‘Origin Story #11’ we see a single version of an origin story – one that arises out of a sugarcane stalk – that suggests the potential origin stories we do not read, and in Sharleigh Crittenden’s ‘Narrowboats’ we read the story of a repeated conversation that offers an enactment of the very stuckness depression can thrust on one who experiences it. Moments sing with light and image: bedroom curtains are an ‘aperture’ to Allison Browning; the lens shutter recalls the way ‘untaken pictures/ pang’ for Eric Jiang. The poets here are present to all of it.

— Kate Middleton, Poetry Editor

The characters in this issue’s stories are coming apart at the seams, or maybe fraying at the edges, to employ a slightly more apt fabric-based metaphor. Taking the stories as a whole, however, made me start to think more how each one, in its way, speaks to the need for abstraction; the pleasure of mulling things over and imagining some other possible life, but letting that other possibility remain just an idea. In Tom Gurn’s ‘Ajar’, two sisters converse in a way both familiar and strange, and in Jen Majoor’s ‘Baby, don’t forget my number’, the narrator reimagines her contacts, categorising and culling them. In Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn’s ‘Ketamine’, a farm worker shifts between the beauty and the darkness in his life. James Noonan finds something new in a world-altering catastrophe through the sadness and intimacy of an unresolved love in ‘Petrichor’, while in Niamh Wood’s ‘The house guest’, a woman struggles to feel the urgency of rising floodwater, drawn under instead by memory. 

— Kate Kruimink, Fiction Editor

Maybe it’s because we’ve just come out of election season, or maybe there’s something in the air, but the essays in this issue all speak in some way about choice. Who we choose to love. Who we choose to emulate. How we feather our nests: what we keep and what we discard. How we choose to identify. The family we choose and the family we don’t. How we tell a story or record a history, what we choose to include or omit in the telling. If choice is also about freedom, then these pieces reveal what Maggie Nelson calls ‘the distressing, if potentially fertile, kinship between freedom and anxiety’. In ‘The turning’, Saraid Taylor examines the prevalence and presumption of queerness in women’s sport. In ‘Home again’, Gina Ward searches her library for a fitting description of homecoming and unsettles the settling process as she goes. Gerard Starling gives a harrowing account of workplace masculinities in ‘Mud kings’, while Timothy Loveday’s astounding verse essay ‘The good, the bad and the elderly’, recalls a pivotal moment in a family’s trajectory. Finally, Cil Harris goes in search of a snuffed-out river and the history of secrecy surrounding it in ‘Concrete and bone’. 

— Keely Jobe, Nonfiction Editor

The art within 174 speaks of other realities, other possibilities and nothing less than the importance of our collective truth. Marion Abraham shares her achingly potent works, which hold a charged energy as all-encompassing as their lush beauty. In this issue’s ‘Art exchange’, Nadia Refaei allows us a deeply personal insight into her experiences growing through the major cultural events that have shaped her creative discipline. Artist Rosie Hastie expresses the means for creation of her utterly unique and fascinating hand-made landscapes, which speak of here and otherwhere while being curiously unnerving. We also explore the works of Bethany van Rijswijk, who embraces all that is rich with wonder and otherness, exploring natural and mythological worlds and creating a ‘lore’ unto herself. 

— Tamzen Brewster, Arts Features Editor

There are few people foolish enough to attempt the graphic novel: it effectively involves writing a feature-length movie and then following that up with years of drawing, colouring and then drawing some more. Pushing out a doctorate would be better for your social life and posture. Alyssa Bermudez has created two graphic novels in her life now. Chalk the first one up to naivety, but the second? But her stories are all about mistakes. In her comic for this issue you can see the two ever-present components to any classic Bermudez story, the two sides of her wisdom coin. Side one is the generosity and kindness Alyssa has for past versions of herself and her past poor decisions. Side two is how she laughs and laughs and laughs at past versions of herself and her past poor decisions. Plenty to admire. 

— Joshua Santospirito, Graphic Narratives Editor