Like many writers and readers, I was upset by recent news that MUP is shutting down essential literary journal Meanjin. I am even more angered to learn that they have refused several offers to relocate the masthead to a more hospitable institution.

The loss of Meanjin is enormous, a big, multi-species-habitat tree falling in a small & shrinking literary ecosystem. My own relationship with the magazine goes back fifteen years and four editors – some of my best experiences of being edited, and some of the best things I’ve written, in my opinion. The last piece I published there was this essay on Running Water Community Press, Australia’s first author-owned and -run publishing cooperative. Witnessing Melbourne University’s failure to steward an 85-year-old piece of critical infrastructure for literature, I can’t help observing that more autonomous models may be more sustainable in future.

If you want to take action, you can join thousands of others and sign this polite request for the Vice-Chancellor to cover Meanjin’s costs from her own absurdly inflated salary. Head to SaveMeanjin.org for more actions and updates – I hope that people power can turn this around.

In better news, the Botanic Gardens of SA have quietly dropped their naming rights arrangement with Santos for the Museum of Economic Botany – four years early! I spoke with InDaily about this win for fossil fuel divestment in arts & cultural spaces. Good on the Botanic Gardens for listening to community concerns – see our 2023 open letter for more background.

Finally, here are a couple of events I have coming up:

Canberra Writers Festival runs from October 22-26 on Ngunnawal and Ngambri country; I’m on one panel on the 26th, ‘Salvaging the Earth’ with Omar El Akkad and Madeleine Watts, and chairing another about technology that afternoon. Looking forward to both discussions, and to sharing Salvage with ACT readers.

And this weekend, a new festival has appeared in SA – it’s called Writers Assemble and it runs from September 20-21 at the State Library of SA, Kaurna yarta. I’m on a panel called ‘Justice’ – always plenty to say about that one.