Featured Stories

Slapton Sands

Non-fictionON THE SOUTH coast of the United Kingdom, in the county of Devon, there’s a triangular sprawl of land that juts out into the English Channel. At its southern tip lies the wealthy sailing town of Salcombe, where a latte costs as much as it does in Shoreditch, and in peak season you’ll queue down the cobbled street for half an hour to get it. Approximately thirty miles up the coastline, there is one of Devon’s most deprived conurbations, Torquay, which sits at the heart of an area known without irony as ‘the English Riviera’. Halfway between the two is Slapton Sands.

Slapton Sands is not that easy to get to if you don’t have a car – the nearest railway station is Totnes, a three-hour train ride from London, and from there it’s a bus to Kingsbridge and another to the Sands. When you arrive, you’ll find that the beach is actually made of pebbles, but that’s not important right now.

You’ll also find a Sherman tank overlooking the water. Stay with me.

By Louise Doughty

Shadow selves

IntroductionThis edition of Griffith Review considers all kinds of loss (and a few notable instances of its inverse). Losing something, of course, doesn’t have to
connote pain or strife: some of the essays and stories in this collection view loss as a beginning rather than an end, a shucking off of old selves or a reappraisal of old habits and ideas.

By Carody Culver

Safe haven

GR OnlineResearch shows that when children are taught their genealogy, they come to understand that they are part of a larger tapestry. This is a fact that gives them strength. But as queer people, we’re raised – for the most part – in heterosexual families. Without our parents, schools or televisions enlightening us, this absence can worsen the isolation many of us experience during our younger years.

By Jonathan Butler

Latest Edition

Lost and Found

Edition 92

'Loss,' wrote Marcus Aurelius, 'is nothing else but change'. We lose face, lose time, lose heart, lose touch, lose ground, lose our keys (often); we can lose the things that hold us back or weigh us down, just as...

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Featured Collection

First Nations Perspectives

We've put together a collection of essays by leading First Nations writers, thinkers and activists that explore the long road to Indigenous representation.

These works are all unlocked and free to read.

Where truths collide

I AM SITTING forward, in nautical terms, looking astern at my awa, who is guiding us through reefs and straits on a moonless night. Above him are stars like phosphorescence in the squid-ink sky. Around his silhouette I see phosphorescence like stars in our small dinghy’s wake. I’m a young man excited to be going night-spearing for kaiyar, the painted crayfish.

By Thomas Mayo

Speaking up

The modern Australian incarnation of truth-telling that emerged from the Uluru Statement from the Heart in 2017 came not from dictatorship and civil war, as had truth-telling in the Latin American ‘radical democracies’ of the 1990s, which pioneered transitional justice. Instead, it derived from local people devising local solutions.

By Megan Davis

The power of the First Nations Matriarchy

I WAS BORN from the world’s most ancient womb: the sacred womb of a First Nations woman. The blood pumping through my veins is the life force of a long line of First Nations Warrior Women whose spirits run deep into this ancient soil. It is a privilege to be raised in a culture that understands the power of the First Nations Matriarchy.

By Teela Reid

When the heart speaks

I had in mind what Australia should be as I wrote the book, a gift to the peoples’ movement for legal, political and structural change in this country – the movement to establish a constitutionally enshrined First Nations Voice to Parliament, as proposed in the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

By Thomas Mayo

The heart of seeding First Nations sovereignty

The demand for treaty – or, more accurately, the demand for many treaties – must be driven by the cultural authority of each sovereign First Nation. This process must be underpinned by cultural protocol and custom that recognises the many tribal clans within the First Nations.

By Teela Reid

The long road to Uluru

Uluru is a game changer. The response of ordinary Australians to the Statement has been overwhelming…a rallying call to the Australian people to “walk with us in a movement…for a better future”.

By Megan Davis