Meanjin Vol 79, No 1

In this edition’s cover essay, Gomeroi poet, essayist and scholar Alison Whittaker takes on the idea of white fragility and asks ‘Has white people becoming more aware of their fragilities and biases really done anything for us; aside from finding a new way to say ‘one of the good ones’ or worse, asking us to?’. Whittaker aims squarely at a progressive white culture that sees an elevated racial conscience as a path to post-colonial innocence.

In other essays, Timmah Ball asks that most fundamental of questions: Why Write? ‘Were they looking for the next successful blak book . . . ’ while Anna Spargo-Ryan writes powerfully on the often-brutal history of abortion in women’s lives and men’s politics. Rick Morton shares his version of Australia in Three Books and Maxine Beneba Clarke considers risk and writers’ acts of courage.

New fiction from Yumna Kassab, Sue Brennan, Nick Robinson and John Kinsella, and poetry by Ouyang Yu, Sarah Holland-Batt, Marija Pericic and Andrew Sant.