SOUTHPAW # 1

You are invited to the launch of a new literary journal
Southpaw: writing from the global south

To be launched by
Professor Stephen Knight
Wednesday 14th December
Arena Project Space
2 Kerr Street Fitzroy
6.30 pm

Refreshments

All welcome

Southpaw # 1 features writing from and about Australia, Africa, China, Philippines, South America and the Pacific around the theme of displacement. It includes essays on the idea of South, power shifts in East Arnhem Land, change and development in Philippines, UFOS in South America and displacement in Colombia fiction and creative non-fiction from Angola, Australia, China, New Zealand, South Africa and Suriname; reviews of Tamil pulp fiction, Indigenous graphic novels and documentaries from the Pacific. There’s an Ainu fable re-told, a radio play and poetry from many places in the global South, much of it in new translation.

Further information: 9416 0232 or 0418 304 500.

Southpaw is a punchy new literary journal that will feature the voices and perspectives of writers from the South. Entering into dialogue with artistic communities across the South, it means to develop links, provoke conversation and share knowledge. Launching in 2011 from Melbourne Australia, it will feature fiction, creative-nonfiction, cultural commentary, essays, poetry, drawings and other graphics from writers and artists in the South.

Southpaw is currently looking for submissions in each of the above categories: short fiction, creative nonfiction, commentary, poetry, drawings, and essays up to 3000 words.

The first issue of Southpaw will be shaped by the experience and idea of ‘displacement’ – a theme with which Southern communities are especially familiar. But this is not necessarily to imply a negative encounter with change or trauma: displacement (in practice and thought) also suggests new possibilities and positive challenges that enliven thinking and burst into creative expression. Southpaw is looking for contemporary voices in all forms of writing. The energy of the South and the alternatives its many cultures and individual creativities offer today will be a challenge and antidote to the traditional sources of cultural influence and activity.

Please make your submission in Word by 30 April 2011.

Email your writing or drawing to: submissions@southpawjournal.com

Alison Caddick, for Southpaw editorial group

USP Press Literature Prize ($3000) will be awarded to the overall winner from the following categories.

The winner in each category will receive $1,000.00

• Fiction ($1,000)
• Poetry ($1,000)
• Drama or Screenplay ($1,000)

USP Press Non Fiction Prize ($3,000) will be awarded to the overall winner from the following categories. The winner in each category will receive $1,000.00.

• History, Auto/Biography ($1,000)
• Sciences ($1,000)
• Social Sciences/Humanities ($1000)
• Best Children’s Book ($2,000)

The competition is open to all nationalities and closes on 15 February, 2011.

The prize money will be in American dollars

Each submission must clearly indicate the category in which it is to be considered.

All submissions must be in hardcopy. Online submissions will not be accepted.

All submissions should be addressed to:

The Chair, Board of the USP Press,
Professor Vilsoni Hereniko,
Oceania Centre for Arts, Culture and Pacific Studies,
The University of the South Pacific
Private Mail Bag,
Laucala Campus, Suva, Fiji.

For enquiries, write to
hereniko_v(at)usp.ac.fj

Dreaming of islands—whether with joy or fear, it doesn’t matter—is dreaming of pulling away, of being already separate, far from any continent, of being lost and alone—or it is dreaming of starting from scratch, recreating, beginning anew.

Gilles Deleuze

Our new issue of LiNQ considers the theme of islands, both metaphorical and real.  Deleuze’s contemplation of islands is just one view—and a Western and Northern Hemisphere one at that.  Southern islands, both in the South Pacific, in South East Asia, and connected to this island continent need not be part of this frame. Joanna Murray-Smith, Dorothy Cottrell, E.J. Banefield, Randolph Stow, Oodgeroo Noonuccal are writers all linked powerfully in the public imagination with particular islands.  There are many hundreds of islands central to our region in the archipelago of the Great Barrier Reef alone. 

The point of departure for this issue will be the environmental writings of Vance and Nettie Palmer and their writings about Green Island. Their nine-month sojourn became a search to understand the meaning of the island, as well as the surrounding reef and its relationship to the sea—for all those who inhabited and used that region.  For the Palmers, the search to understand was deeply connected to the search for words and ways to write about it. Nettie’s poetic lyricism of modernism offered a form to entice the reader, then.  How do we write islands, now?  Memoir, autobiography, eco-writing, and travel are just a few modes that some writers use when they consider islands. 

LiNQ calls for academic submissions that address Island Writing/ Writing Islands in its range of meanings, discussing literature and/or culture, present or past, with preference given to the Antipodean North: North Queensland, the archipelago of the Great Barrier Reef, the Pacific this side the Equator. Similarly, LiNQ is seeking poetic, fictional, and creative non-fiction treatments of islands from the evocation of a numinous island landscapes to the enduring effect of landscape, history, culture.

Dr Deborah Jordan of the School of English, Media Studies and Art History, University of Queensland, will serve as guest editor of the special issue.  
Submit manuscripts to
Email:          d.jordan@uq.edu.au
Or through our submission portal on the LiNQ website.

Articles must be no longer than 6000 words.  Include a brief abstract of the article or creative submission (no more than 75 words) and a 50-word biographical note. Reviews are also welcome.  Follow MLA citation style and format.  All contributions should be submitted as a Microsoft Word file, double-spaced in 12 point font.  All images must be used by permission only.    
SUBMISSIONS CLOSE ON  AUGUST 30, 2010 for Issue 27 December 2010.

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Hau’ofa was born in Papua New Guinea in 1939 of Tongan missionary parents. He was educated in a variety of countries, eventually receiving his PhD at the Department of Anthropology, Australian National University. His positions included Keeper of Palace Records in Tonga, Head of Sociology Department and Head of the School of Social and Economic Development of the University of the South Pacific.

In 1997, he was the founding Director of the Oceania Centre for Arts and Culture in Suva. This became an important cultural base for exchange and expression in the Pacific.

Hau’ofa was a novelist of satiric fiction, such Tales of the Tikongs and Kisses in the Nederlands. His most recent publication, We are the Ocean, included essays about the nature of the Oceanic, and how the sea connects Pacific peoples together, from the east coast of Australia to California.

In 2004, he visited Melbourne to give a presentation at South 1, the inaugural meeting of writers and artists from across the South. His expansive notion of the Oceanic provided an important platform for connecting together the island people participating, particularly from Rapa Nui.

His conversation with ABC radio host Philip Adams at the time dwelt on his pride in cabbages. The fruits of Epeli Hau’ofa will be enjoys for many years to come.

• Tributes