Island magazine

24/01/2025

Are you a young Tasmanian artist or arts worker? Arts Tasmania has a new program to support you - the Young and Emerging Artist Professional Development Program aims to support young Tasmanian artists and arts workers to undertake professional and skills development activities.
Five grants of $16,000 are available to support activities commencing after 1 August 2025. This could include Tasmanian, national, or international residencies, mentorships, masterclasses or attachments with arts organisations on existing projects or productions.
Applicants must be 25 years of age or under at the time of application or in the first five years of their professional creative practice.
Applications are now open, and close at 11.59pm on Monday, 17 March 2025. All enquiries about the program can be directed to Arts Tasmania via 03 6165 6666 or [email protected]

22/01/2025

No one but Ben Walter could write this essay that asks of his beloved cricket, 'even if the game were played with pademelon leather and king billy pine bats on a wide stretch of native, ochre-tinged kangaroo grasses, would this be any different? Wouldn’t it still be an utterly human activity, with so little regard for nature that it might as well be played in a conference centre?' Wit, gentleness and a strange, wild eye applied to the oddest of all games: islandmag.com/read
Image: Matthew McLennan

19/01/2025

Don't blink! EL Weber's dystopian story of a biological enhancement gone wrong and an unendurable workplace, 'Generation optimisation' is free to read now at islandmag.com/read
Image: v20sk - Unsplash

18/01/2025

Comics are back! We'll be publishing a graphic narrative in every issue of Island this year. Send us your pitches before 17 February - all the details are at islandmag.com/submit

13/01/2025

Justin Russell tells the story of his long and dedicated relationship with the bunya pine, on Island Online:
'Bunya cones scream prehistoric. They’re roughly the size of an adult head, green in colour, scaly, and weigh up to 10kg. If there’s one place you don’t want to be in late summer, it’s standing beneath the crown of a large bunya pine because a cone falling from the top of a tree will reach a velocity just over 100km per hour. If that thing lands on your head, it’s lights out. '
Read more at islandmag.com/read
Image: Naoto Sato

11/01/2025

Island is thrilled to introduce our new Arts Editor, Tamzen Brewster.

Tamzen is a multidisciplinary artist living in the southern beaches region of Lutruwita/Tasmania. She has a background in varied fields within the arts including project management and arts facilitation. Her arts practice incorporates painting, collage, pattern design, sculpture, photography, digital design, public art and installations.

Through creativity and awareness she believes there is scope for deeper connections and that through art there are possibilities for shifts in how we interpret and approach the way we live, forming stronger avenues for understanding and positive progression.

Photo: Kristy Dowsing

10/01/2025

Submissions are open for Island Online! Send us your best short fiction and essays (preferably under 1500 words) before 10 February. Find out more at islandmag.com/submit
Image: Thomas Smillie - Smithsonian Libraries and Archives

08/01/2025

Island is thrilled to see the longlists for the Tasmanian Literary Awards. Tasmania is home to so many brilliant writers, and these longlists highlight the depth of craft and talent this island hosts. What's more, the longlists feature - along with a host of former Island contributors, board members and editorial staff - books from Island's recent editor Matthew Lamb ('Frank Moorhouse: Strange Paths' - nonfiction) and current fiction editor Kate Kruimink ('Heartsease' - fiction). Congratulations to all the listed authors!

We are thrilled to announce the longlists for the 2025 Tasmanian Literary Awards 📚🌟

The judges had the difficult task of assessing 170 entries and determining longlists for the four book prize categories: Minister for the Arts’ Prize for Books for Young Readers and Children, Premier’s Prize for Non-fiction, Premier’s Prize for Fiction and Tim Thorne Prize for Poetry.

The shortlists for all prizes will be announced in February 2025. Learn more about the longlisted books at www.arts.tas.gov.au/tasliteraryawards

The Tasmanian Literary Awards are supported by University of Tasmania Libraries Tasmania Island magazine Arts Tasmania



[Image text: Tasmanian Literary Awards 2025 Longlists announced]

28/12/2024

Time to send us your fiction and nonfiction! Submissions for the first two print issues of 2025 close on Monday - find out more at islandmag.com/submit

Image: Unseen Studio

27/12/2024

New to poetry at Island Online, read Helen Jarvis' touching 'Washing my mother's hair', her skull 'frail as a scrap of bird's egg': islandmag.com/read

Image: Philippe Murray Pietsch

18/12/2024

We are thrilled to announce the longlists for the 2025 Tasmanian Literary Awards 📚🌟

The judges had the difficult task of assessing 170 entries and determining longlists for the four book prize categories: Minister for the Arts’ Prize for Books for Young Readers and Children, Premier’s Prize for Non-fiction, Premier’s Prize for Fiction and Tim Thorne Prize for Poetry.

The shortlists for all prizes will be announced in February 2025. Learn more about the longlisted books at www.arts.tas.gov.au/tasliteraryawards

The Tasmanian Literary Awards are supported by University of Tasmania Libraries Tasmania Island magazine Arts Tasmania



[Image text: Tasmanian Literary Awards 2025 Longlists announced]

17/12/2024

Running short on present ideas? How about a gift of 48 poems, 20 short stories and 20 brilliant creative essays? As well as page after page of beautiful art? Order a year's gift subscription now and you can start with the current issue, 172, featuring a glorious cover by Rex Greeno, or kick off in March with the winners of the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize in issue 173. Who wouldn't like a year's worth of original Australian literature in their stocking? Find out more at

Looking for a gift for the reader in your life? An Island subscription makes the perfect present! Starting from $38 including postage, gift subscriptions are available for either 2, 3 or 4 issues. A gift certificate can be emailed to you, or directly to the recipient with a personal message from

13/12/2024

As we dive into summer and the water beckons, Craig White explores Tasmania’s complex relationship with wild waterways and the potent risks they provide: 'On the second-last day, we arrived bedraggled at the crossing of South Cape Rivulet, normally a safe wade to the campsite beyond. With the intermittent rain and king tides of past days, the rivulet was swollen and fully alive, frothing at the edges...'
islandmag.com/read
Image: Patrick McGregor - Unsplash

09/12/2024

Submissions for the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize close next week!
The winning poet will receive $2000 + four-issue subscription to Island.
Two runners-up will each receive $500 + four-issue subscription to Island.
All three poems will be published in Island issue 173, due for publication in March 2024.
Send us your best work - see islandmag.com/submit for more information.

Image Calum Macauley - Unsplash

Red Room Poetry Australian Poetry Cordite Publishing Inc.

06/12/2024

Payton Hogan's 'Afterbirth' is strange, visceral and seductive. Dive in!
'I did exactly as she said. I even claimed a disused, inoperable birthing suite as a safe space of my own, a place to meditate and come up with further ideas of my own as, every night, that glow evaded me. First, I stopped using deodorant. After no results, I stopped showering or washing my hands altogether. Next, I started eating only soft foods, and then only liquids – I told my co-workers that I was on a cleanse and ate up their praise. If only they knew the real work that I’ve been doing. But it’s too personal to share.' Read on at islandmag.com/read

Image: Pawel Czerwinski - Unsplash

06/12/2024

Wish you could read Island 172 right now without waiting for it to be delivered? Good news: you can! See Rex Greeno's art in all its glory; read some of the best poetry going around; find out what it's like to live in Japan or accidentally go on writing retreat; ask yourself what you'd do if, moments after death, you were given the power to change any headline ever published. You can do it all now by downloading the digital version of Island 172 issuu.com/islandmagazinetasmania

05/12/2024

05/12/2024

This week we're highlighting the five recipients of the 2025 Libraries Tasmania Fellowships.

Meet Ivy Alvarez, who has been awarded one of the two Writing Fellowships (with Island magazine)

Ivy is a highly respected writer and editor.

Ivy’s Fellowship project is titled ‘The Pain Button and other stories’. Ivy aims to uncover the obscure links between Filipino people who travelled to Tasmania. This will include Tasmanians who have sought a relationship with the Philippines.

Read about the Fellowships: https://bit.ly/3CO5dHe

📷: Portrait of Ivy Alvarez, with collection items that inspired her Fellowship project.
📷: Tasmanian Archives: Program - The Baranggay Philippine Dancers (1972), AF260/1/274: https://bit.ly/3VewhG7
📷: Tasmanian Archives: Royal Hobart Hospital - Nurses Indentures Ceremony (Graduation)- 'Mercury' photo - Maureen King (Ireland), Sew Ping Ng (Malaysia), Coleen Sayer (New Zealand), Josefina Supramanian (Phillipines) (1969), AE673/1/302: https://bit.ly/3Vd2TQj