Submissions open – Griffith Review 60: Renewed Promise

Submissions are now open for Griffith Review 60: Renewed Promise

Edited by Julianne Schultz and Sandra Phillips
Published 30 April 2018
Submissions are for completed pieces only, via our Submittable page. The deadline is midnight, Sunday 12 November 2017.

Making peace after dispute seems the hardest thing to do. This continent’s last two hundred and thirty years reveal the ravages of unresolved disputes between peoples. Are we ready to see those ravages and settle the disputes? Are we ready to make peace and firmer ground for laws, policies, and outcomes that improve Indigenous and non-Indigenous life in Australia?

This special edition of Griffith Review, inspired by the Uluru Statement from the Heart, will turn these questions over to excavate history and re-imagine futures, while not forgetting the urgencies of the present. The commitment to the concept of Makarrata, ‘coming together after a struggle’ offers renewed promise. But as a response to the lack of constitutional recognition how might Makarrata work? How can a voices be amplified and truth heard and acted on? How might it change the Australian ‘rule-book’ and social norms? Is the process itself a transformative lesson for a uniquely Australian public life? How might Makarrata change everyday life in local communities and national life? What lessons can we learn from the deep past and from more recent history? And what agreements have already been made in the spirit it conjures? Or will those with power simply seek to ignore this historic opportunity? Renewed Promise provides a unique opportunity to share transformative information, structural challenges and personal insights. Renewed Promise aims to be a robust chorus of urgent tone and nuanced contour for genuine consideration of Makarrata beyond symbolism.

Griffith Review invites contributions for this edition in addition to commissioned pieces. If you would like us to consider your work, please submit completed essays, memoirs and stories by midnight 12 November.

Dr Sandra Phillips is a creative industries academic and researcher following a career in publishing (Aboriginal Studies Press, University of Queensland Press, and Magabala Books). Wakka Wakka and Gooreng Gooreng, Sandra has three sons and one granddaughter. This edition is supported by the Queensland University of Technology.

Writers are encouraged to read our writers’ guidelines and past editions of Griffith Review, which are free to access online, to familiarise themselves with style, tone and word length. We are now accepting complete pieces of any form (essay, memoir, reportage, fiction and poetry).