from the editor's desk
On the Closure of Meanjin
Catherine Noske, past Editor of Westerly
On Thursday September 4, news broke that Meanjin, Australia’s second-oldest literary journal, was to be closed down. The Australian literary community is rightly sad and angry at this. Past Westerly Editor Catherine Noske writes here on what we all lose if the decision is not reversed. Westerly stands firmly with Meanjin.
Like many others, when I heard the news regarding the closure of Meanjin yesterday, my immediate response was shock. Disbelief, however, quickly gave way to anger, and a deep disgust. It is unthinkable that one of our leading universities, an institution which outlines a strategic priority to ‘contribute to social, economic and cultural wealth’, would sacrifice such an essential piece of cultural infrastructure within our nation’s literary landscape.
From my time as Editor of Westerly, I know well the precariousness of a literary magazine. I am all too familiar with the endless cycle of grant applications and the stress of pulling together a budget year by year, with funding drawn from multiple different sources, just trying to make ends meet. With the impossibility of forward planning when the only thing in mind is contingency. With the sensation that we are only ever a few failed grant applications away from the edge.
A literary magazine is not a profitable enterprise. It is held together by the passion, effort and dedication of the team behind it—a team which is, more often than not, short-staffed and offering enormous amounts of unpaid labour and/or overtime as a mitigation towards an otherwise impossible workload.
To see the team behind Meanjin treated with such little respect as to be made redundant effective immediately with the announcement, and seemingly even gagged against speaking out, is a cruel response to their dedication and diligence.
And while a literary magazine is not profitable, its costs in the scheme of a university budget are relatively small. On the other hand, the return—the enormous contribution that Meanjin makes to our culture, to the careers of writers, to considered debate and social consciousness in our nation—is impossible to account.
The closure of Meanjin is, in this sense, an insult to Australian culture. It is a damaging and short-sighted assessment of value, placing greater significance on small-scale cost-saving than the inestimable richness of the space Meanjin holds for Australian literature. It disregards coldly the cultural wealth of the magazine, and the cultural infrastructure it represents on a national level. Make no mistake, our nation is poorer for this.
There is, as there should be, outcry over this decision. With the swiftness of it and action around it, Melbourne University is attempting to suggest the closure of Meanjin is unassailable. But decisions have been overturned before. A community speaking out can make an enormous difference, as we have seen here in Western Australia with UWAP, which was saved from the brink.
I encourage you to lend your voice to protesting in any way you are able. You might wish to sign, for example, this open letter authored by poet and novelist Alan Fyfe, calling for the decision to be reversed: https://openletter.earth/an-open-letter-to-the-vice-chancellor-of-the-university-of-melbourne-on-the-closure-of-meanjin-6617e6d9
I offer my sympathy and gratitude to Esther Anatolitis and to everyone involved with Meanjin, for all they have given us.
Catherine Noske is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at The University of Western Australia. She served as Editor of Westerly Magazine from 2015 until 2023, and now continues to support the Magazine as Scholarly Editor. Her debut novel, The Salt Madonna (Picador 2020), was shortlisted in the 2021 WA Premier’s Book Awards.
