This journal is the result of the passion and dedication of a group of Swinburne students and staff who were determined to add to the cultural landscape not only of their university, but of the wider literary world.
Other Terrain aims to introduce new and aspiring voices and our first issue proudly does just that.
If there is a single theme that runs through its pages, it is the need for the human spirit to remain free. From hearts trying to steal a moment of vibrant passion in the stories Invisible and High-Wasted Genes, to the journey taken by the young to break free of expectations on them in love, sex, and romance in A Note from the Girl Who Muffles Her Inner Voice, we walk with the authors through experiences that are both joyful and fraught. Yet of course, these emotions transcend time, and so we follow this path into the future with The Last Interview on Earth, a philosophical tale pondering life and death. In addition to taking us on a poignant adventures across oceans, Foreigner and I Met Australia in an Occupied Land reminds us that we can rarely break free of our cultural and social subjectivities and similarly Designer Babies, Seven Deadly Selfies and Same but Different draw us in with a sharp eye for social observation. The cost humans will go to in order to preserve their liberty is hilariously explored when two men try to dispose of a body to great shenanigans in The Intentions of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Writing and reading is a critical interchange, and it is in this spirit that Other Terrain includes an interrogation of Anglo-Indian identity as played out in Umi Sinha’s Belonging and a thought provoking interview with author Karina Machado – a writer who dares delves into what can be only be described as the other terrains of human existence. The powerful poems published in this first issue will also touch minds and hearts, as will the interviews with artists Stephanie Gray and Jordie Golding.
Other Terrain is looking forward to a future of work in experimental forms and styles, cross-genre leaps and blurrings, and stories innovatively told.
Dr Carolyn Beasley
Course Director, Writing
Image by Vashishtha Jogi