Issue 159 out this month

We are always excited when we publish Island, but perhaps even more so with this next issue. After being unsuccessful in achieving a renewal of multi-year grant funding from Arts Tasmania, it seemed unlikely that the magazine would survive 2019, let alone 2020. But due to an anonymous private benefactor, a matched once-only government grant and some individual donors, we were able to start work on the 2020 publishing schedule (albeit reduced to two issues instead of the normal four). The global pandemic has certainly added some extra challenges, but here we are, about to publish issue 159, the first of our two 2020 issues!

 We cannot express how grateful we are to everyone who has made this possible – our funding, design and advertising partners, our donors, our contributors and our readers.

 This is the first issue put together by our refreshed editorial team of Anna Spargo-Ryan (nonfiction), Ben Walter (fiction), Lisa Gorton (poetry) and Judith Abell (art features). We are thrilled to have them on board. They bring such enthusiasm, energy and commitment to their task, and have delivered selections that are richly diverse and worthy.

 Here you’ll find poems about fires, bodies, art and violence – including some that recall the summer’s fires and others that resonate with the confinement of these isolated days. You’ll also find thoughtful essays about the arts in this time of crisis, but also about ideas as important now as ever, such as togetherness, curiosity, love and the deep solace to be found in nature. There’s fresh, funny, clever and shocking fiction here that will take you on a dizzying ride through far-flung hotel rooms (how distant they seem right now!), the comic drama of suburban renovations, the strange world of the workplace and the bizarre one of reality TV crime drama, the mysteries of childhood, and one of the darkest great-aunts you’ll ever meet. As always, our art features enrich the issue, and this time they coalesce around various sites and forms of tragedy and extinction – from Julie Gough’s Tense Past, to Lucienne Rickard’s Extinction Studies and Selena de Carvalho’s Beware of Imposters (the secret life of flowers) – all of them urging us to attend to what has been lost and what can yet be lost.

We hope that these voices will inspire, entertain and comfort you in our uncertain and vulnerable times.