WesterlyMagazine

Editorial: Westerly 69.2

We’re launching Westerly 69.2 on Thursday, 1 May 2025 at the Fremantle Library and we can’t wait for this new issue to be out in the world.

Featuring exciting new work from writers and artists across WA, Australia and the world, Westerly 69.2 showcases a range of contemporary poetry, fiction, nonfiction and, for the first time, comics, with a piece from WA comics artist Nina Dakin. Contributors to 69.2 include Carrie Chappell, Nandi Chinna, Rashida Murphy, Julie Watts, John Kinsella, Pidj Flavell, James Salvius Cheng, Sharon Mesmer, Liam Byrne, Miriam Wei Wei Lo, Hannah McCann and many others. Westerly is also proud to feature the first part of a longer work by Tjalaminu Mia, ‘Milebaar wer-moora kadidjiny won-gin wadjella-warr’, that shares stories of resistance and resilience (with parts two and three appearing in the next print issues of Westerly to come).

As we inch closer to the official launch of Westerly 69.2, we’re excited to give you a glimpse of what can be expected within its pages by sharing the issue’s introductory words by our General Editor, Daniel Juckes.

Purchase your copy of Westerly 69.2 here, and RSVP to attend the launch in person or online here.

From the Editor

Towards the end of 2024, as we were preparing this issue of Westerly, our literary community in Western Australia met with a terrible blow: the death of the much-loved and respected Brenda Walker. In attempting to choose the right words to introduce this issue of Westerly, it did not feel possible to do so without first acknowledging Brenda. The Westerly team are especially grateful for her contributions to the Magazine over a long period of time, as writer, editor and advisor. While writing this editorial, I spent some time re-reading Brenda’s contributions to Westerly, in the hope of finding something in them that might add to the many tributes already offered, not least in the beautiful book of remembrances In Fellowship, collated by Georgia Richter and Fremantle Press. But I kept coming back to something that appeared in the office quite by chance, in the weeks following Brenda’s death: a book of hers was returned to us, with a card inside, containing a kind and generous note, sent to a friend. In this evidence of Brenda in the world, speaking and sharing, was something somehow even more tangible than her work as a writer or critic; in her handwriting—black ink on white paper, each letter idiosyncratic—was evidence of an act of care for those she loved. This is the kind of person we will remember, on top of and including Brenda’s brilliance as writer, teacher, colleague. And so, on behalf of us all here at Westerly, I would like to extend our deepest sympathies to Brenda’s husband, Alex, to her son, Tom, and to all those to whom she was dear. She will be missed.

• • •

The observant reader will have noticed that this issue of Westerly comes late into the world. For this, I apologise. We’ve been working hard behind the scenes, but have had a number of delays to contend with. We are so excited to offer these collected writings to you now, though, and hope they bring you the solace only reading can induce: there is no shortage of remarkable writers and writing contained herein.

One essay to make special mention of is the first part of a longer work by Tjalaminu Mia, ‘Milebaar wer-moora kadidjiny won-gin wadjellawarr’, that shares stories of resistance and resilience. The second and third parts of Aunty Tj’s work will be published across the next two print issues of Westerly. The relationships that Aunty Tj describes in ‘Milebaar wer-moora kadidjiny won-gin wadjella-warr’ also seem to mark some of the more prominent themes of Issue 69.2, given the ways in which so many of the works draw lines between mothers and children, children and mothers and grandmothers, and between the writer and the natural world. In trying to find the right route through the poems, stories, essay and art we publish here, I could not help but offer up crescendos that respond to these ideas. It’s telling, perhaps, that in a world that continues to be volatile, maternal lines and the joy of birds, rivers, plants—all the wonder contained in the category ‘nonhuman’, perhaps—were what stood out for us in our reading.

Also notable in this issue of Westerly are works by Nina Dakin and Richard Read. Nina’s work is the first comic published in print in Westerly following our Graphic Narratives Online Special Issue, and it marks a new commitment to this form! Richard’s work is an engagement with the painting of Western Australian artist Angela Stewart. It follows a retrospective exhibition of Stewart’s work at Gallery Central: ‘Angela Stewart // Memory: 40 Years of Making’. Richard’s reading of Stewart’s work is speculative, and concerns the echoes and repercussions of grief.

As always, there are lots of people to thank for their work bringing this issue into your hands—many more than I can name here. Shalmalee Palekar, Sarah Yeung, Melissa Kruger and Catherine Noske at UWA are the wonderful people you expect them to be. So are our fantastic external editors, Casey Mulder (First Nations), Julie Koh (Fiction), Stefanie Markidis (Creative Nonfiction), Lucy Dougan (Poetry) and Cassandra Atherton (Commissions). This issue of Westerly marks the first in which Per Henningsgaard has served as Graphic Narratives Editor. Welcome, Per—and thank you! This issue also marks Julie Koh’s last as Fiction Editor: Julie, you found us some wonderful stories, read kindly and astutely, and were an absolute pleasure to work with. Thank you so much.

Thank you to Becky Chilcott (Chil3), Keith Feltham (Lasertype) and Advance Press. Thank you, too, to Joseph Cook, Kyle Orton and Christine Vuong: as interns you went above and beyond.

I’d also like to recognise the funding bodies who allow Westerly to keep publishing: thanks to The University of Western Australia, and to the Arthur Finn Bequest here on campus, for room and board, and for vital funds. Thank you, as well, to the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries here in WA. Overall, it’s been a tricky period for Westerly funding-wise, as it always is across the Arts sector. We are hopeful that we will have good news on this front soon, but, for now, it feels important to note that we are still unsure whether we will be able to publish our next print issues this year. Given the significance of our turning 70, this is not pleasant to contemplate. We hope you, the reader, will feel able to keep supporting the Magazine any way you can, either by subscribing, reading, sharing work from our pages or just telling all the people you love that Western Australian literature is as vibrant and compelling as we know it to be. Thank you for your support.

Daniel Juckes, March 2025

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