Island magazine

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

02/12/2024

Submissions are now open for fiction and nonfiction for the first two print issues of Island for 2025. Send us your very best stories and essays before 30 December - all the details are at islandmag.com/submit

Image: Christian Hume - Unsplash

01/12/2024

Congratulations to Niki Bañados, whose comic 'The perfect human', was a Silver Ledger award winner in the Comic Arts Awards of Australia. 'The perfect human' was developed and published as part of 'The Nanna', Island's graphic narrative project, and appeared in Island 169. You can read this comic online at https://islandmag.com/read/the-perfect-human-by-niki-banados (or pick up a copy of the magazine, which also features Ben Walter's Walkley Award-winning essay, 'The Only Fish' at https://islandmag.com/buy-online/p/island-169)

2024 Comic Arts Awards of Australia Recipients!

A huge congratulations to this year’s awardees! Check out the full list of recipients and celebrate their incredible achievements: https://comicartsaust.com.au/2024-award-recipients/

01/12/2024

Every issue of Island is the work of many people - editors, designers and - of course - writers and artists. But 172 had two extra pairs of hands and eyes involved, thanks to the contribution of University of Tasmania interns, Abby Otten and Meisha Simpson (pictured here with Managing Editor Jane Rawson). Abby and Meisha shadowed our fiction and nonfiction editors, selecting stories and providing edits and generally experiencing the life of a literary magazine worker. It was brilliant to have their input and we are grateful to them and to UTAS for working with us to create this opportunity.

29/11/2024

Submissions are now open for the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize, supported by The Hobart Bookshop.
This year's Prize will be judged by Island's poetry editor Kate Middleton, along with Amy Crutchfield and John Kinsella.
We are looking for new poems up to 100 lines, in any form.
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.

island.submittable.com/submit/312440/gwen-harwood-2025-comp

29/11/2024

We don't want to spoil this beautiful short poem from Cameron Lowe by giving you a preview, so you will have to head to Island Online to read 'Friesland Farm under red clouds' islandmag.com/read

Image by Crawford Jolly

27/11/2024

Congratulations to Ivy Alvarez and Ben Walter (seen here with Managing Editor Jane Rawson), who have been awarded the first-ever 'State Library and Archives of Tasmania and Island Magazine Writing Fellowships', announced last night. Ivy's project, 'The Pain Button and Other Stories', will use the Tasmanian Archives collections to uncover the obscured links between Filipinos who have travelled to Tasmania, and the Tasmanians who have sought a relationship with the Philippines. Ben will develop experimental nature fiction through engagement with the journals and letters of Tasmanian bushwalker, Jack Thwaites. Each fellow is paid $5000. We can't wait to see the results of their investigations!

26/11/2024

Congratulations to the five recipients of the 2025 Libraries Tasmania Fellowships:
• Research Fellowship – Dr Joy McCann
• Creative Fellowship – Robert O’Connor
• Aboriginal Fellowship – Dr Zoe Rimmer
• Writing Fellowships (with Island Magazine) – Ivy Alvarez and Ben Walter

Read about their projects: https://libraries.tas.gov.au/slat/fellowship/

The Libraries Tasmania Fellowship Program started in 2024 with a Creative Fellowship and a Research Fellowship.

The aim of the Fellowships is for researchers and creatives to work with the collections of the State Library and Archives of Tasmania. Their work connects with Tasmania’s rich stories, identity and history.

Island magazine

24/11/2024

We are so delighted that Niki Bañados' comic, 'The Perfect Human, has been shortlisted for the Comic Arts Awards of Australia. This gorgeous meditation on raising a child in a time of environmental crisis was part of the 'Nana Project', which ran over several issues of Island's print magazine. You can also see this particular comic at https://islandmag.com/read/the-perfect-human-by-niki-banados

Short List Spotlight:

The Perfect Human
Publishers: Island magazine
Creators Involved: Niki Bañados, writing and illustration.
https://islandmag.com/read/the-perfect-human-by-niki-banados

Project synopsis: This comic is about bringing a baby, ‘The Perfect Human,’ into a world where civilisation is likely to change drastically over the next few decades. Environment and our place within it is explored by zooming right out to how fossil fuels were created back in geological time, zooming in on local examples such as the Cooks River, and grounded by images from day to day routine.

First published in Island Magazine #169 as part of The Nanna graphic narratives project.

Catch this standout work at the Comic Arts Awards Night on November 29th! Join us to celebrate exceptional storytelling and design.

23/11/2024

Roanna McClelland's beautiful, compelling essay 'Brackish tongue' is now free to read on Island Online:
'My Californian guide and I take respite under a lace of canopies, knee-deep in stagnant brown water, and I think about Ruth teaching me to put on layers of sunscreen, to put methylated spirits on burning heels after another day of hiking. Of trailing behind her along ochre-clay tracks that look like dry riverbeds themselves, except for the occasional mounded bull-ant nests.'
islandmag.com/read/brackish-tongue-by-roanna-mcclelland

22/11/2024

'The grass fire sent black, dust-soaked smoke into the air and, mixed with Lux, the smell cut deep into her nostrils. The clothes’ll stink to high heaven if I leave them out here, Lori realised, dropping a towel back in the basket and lugging it back over the tarnished brass doorstep. Piece by piece, she draped the sodden clothes across the old wooden airer in the sunroom.'

Read 'The Miracle', a new story from Nadia Mahjouri, at islandmag.com/read

Image: Matt Palmer