Magazines and Journals

Arena is well known in Melbourne and Australia more broadly as a publication which has made an impact on political and cultural interpretation and practice over a period of more than thirty years. However, Arena is more than this or that publication. It is composed of a core of people with a large number of friends and supporters who have established various venues and discussion projects in Melbourne and its environs as well as engaging in a variety of practical endeavours over this period.

The core value of co-operation stands at the centre of what motivates and structures the practices and discussions of people at Arena. It is a value which has had superficial meanings for many groups, but be that as it may, it needs to be re-thought in fundamental ways given the collapse of older notions of socialist co-operation. This project enlivens all the discussions held in Arena settings and shapes the activities and publications of Arena editors.

Over the last three decades people associated with Arena have established research and conference facilities in both the country and the city, and in the latter there is a thriving centre which combines publication, public discussion and a commercial printery.

Arena has never accepted government support of any kind and has been fortunate to have been valued sufficiently by its friends for them to help its development financially in a variety of ways.

Imprint: MAGAZINES
RRP: $9.90

Issue 45 of The Lifted Brow: essays, fiction, translations, commentary, criticism, poetry, and as always so many pages of comics and illustrations.

With cover art by Michael Fikaris, Issue 45 of The Lifted Brow includes:

** An adaptation of Nic Holas' Brow Talk about how far we have come in depathologising but not depoliticising our sex lives, guest edited by TLB founder Ronnie Scott;

** Georgia Mill elucidates the invisible but entrenched barriers to queer parenthood in Australia;

** An exploratory essay from Tess Pearson that pieces together language and the body after pregnancy;

** Kate Scardifield with an experimental essay on limbs, detachment, and the instinct to collect and categorise;

** Aurora Scott with a lyric essay on islands, rocks, isolation and attention;

** Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn writing on breaking the silence in the mining industry and why it is so hard to be heard;

** An excerpt from Eloise Grills' upcoming Brow Books publication big beautiful female theory;

** Odette Casamayor-Cisneros, translated by Erin Goodman, with a story that peers through the screen and finds the other side wanting; plus an interview between author and translator on work, intimacy, and the soundtrack to it all;

** Punchy dystopic fiction from Kang Young-Sook, translated by Janet Hong, on contagion and the bonds that hold us;

** A prose poem from Rosmarie Waldrop that scrutinises semantics;

** Poetry from Georgia Kartas, Panda Wong, and Jason Phu;

** columns: Antonia Pont’s tour-de-force ‘Thinking Feeling’ column about the ethics and micro-dynamics of leadership; Jana Perkovic’s column ‘The Critic’ reflects on Exit Strategies, and the complex work of leaving; and Benjamin Law and his mum Jenny Phang’s famous ‘Law School’ sex+relationships advice column;

** A new ‘By Numbers’ feature by Panda Wong that uses numerical data to investigate the world of trees;

and new comics and visual art by April Phillips, Anya Davidson, Wakana Yamazaki, Mary Leunig, Can Yalcinkaya, Ashley Ronning, Angelica Roache-Wilson, Humyara Mahbub, Shae San Sim, Emma Davidson, Zanem Zlemeša, Ben Constantine, Emilie Walsh, Christine Obst, Tom Groenestyn, and Oscar Nimmo.

Imprint: MAGAZINES
RRP: $15.95

Issue #027: Family Matters

Tales of brothers feuding, often ending with one committing fratricide, are unsettlingly common in mythology. Set murdered Osiris, Romulus killed Remus, and Oedipus’s sons Eteocles and Polynices killed each other. More recently, and less imaginatively, Adolf and Rudolf Dassler (of Adidas and Puma fame respectively) and Sterling and Stephen Clark (heirs to the Singer sewing machine fortune) turned their backs on one another, over money.

Imprint: NEW PHILOSOPHER MAGAZINE
RRP: $14.95