The Lifted Brow

11/04/2022

A statement from the TLB Board is now available to read on our website: https://www.theliftedbrow.com/liftedbrow/2022/4/11/a-statement-from-the-board-of-tlb-society-inc

A Statement from the Board of TLB Society Inc April 11, 2022 TLB Board The Lifted Brow Board is happy to announce that Lur Alghurabi, Laura Pettenuzzo and Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn have joined the Board, effective 13 June 2021. The new members serve a term of two years. Lur Alghurabi has joined the boa...

04/02/2021

Some exciting news from Brow Books

Recent Experiments in Australian Nonfiction

10/08/2020

Brow Books will not be accepting manuscripts or signing new authors until we have completed our re-evaluation and restructure of The Lifted Brow organisation. Over the past few months, a small number of Brow Books titles reached the end of their publishing process and went to market. We hav

27/07/2020

Please see The Lifted Brow website for a statement from the new interim Board of TLB Society Inc.

It’s hard to know where to start when writing something like this. The obvious place would be the beginning, but, we have to be honest with you, there’s a lot that we don’t know about the beginning. These kinds of statements often invoke the complexity of a situation. The reality is that we ha...

10/04/2020

Please see the TLB website for a statement from the TLB Board:

The Board of TLB Society Inc has been made aware that a number of rumours regarding TLB and its Board have been shared in recent weeks, and would like to address them here. A subcommittee of the Board recently investigated potential misconduct relating to the past conduct of one of TLB’s workers. ...

06/04/2020

"This letter is a call to action following the recent announcement of the recipients of Australia Council for the Arts ‘Four Year Funding for Organisations’ grants.

We are especially concerned about the impacts these decisions will have on Australian arts writing. Of the organisations that were either unsuccessful or who have received transitional one-year funding, many are journals devoted to commissioning and publishing new, experimental and critical writing about Australian arts and culture - among them eyeline, Artlink, Art Monthly Australasia, Overland, The Lifted Brow, and the Sydney Review of Books. The contribution these publications make to our cultural life is already significant, but at a moment in history where our cultural experiences are defined by distance, publications that can facilitate the circulation of ideas and help us understand our present circumstances should be doubly supported.

In writing this piece, we acknowledge the importance of the Australia Council as an independent body tasked with equitable distribution of Federal arts funding in response to submissions from the sector, and according to fair and rigorous peer reviewed processes.

We acknowledge that the damage these current decisions will cause is due to a chronic and long-term disregard for the arts at a Federal level, which will compound the impacts of the COVID-19 health crisis. The arts and culture sector has already suffered from six years of budget cuts and policy making that is reactive, openly hostile to the sector, or missing in action. It is not the fault of the Australia Council that it must operate within such restrictions.

The 2014 Federal budget stripped, without consultation, 104.7 million dollars from the Australia Council’s budget to fund a duplicate administrative body, the National Program for Excellence in the Arts, which was quickly disestablished. Whilst 8 million per year was returned to the Australia Council, its funding has never been restored to pre-2014 levels, and there is a greater loss when adjusted for inflation and growth in GDP. The small to medium and independent sector of the arts has borne the brunt of these cuts, which have meant that heading into the unprecedented COVID-19 crisis the arts was already operating in incredibly challenging conditions.

When gatherings of over 500 people were banned on March 13th 2020, the impact on the arts and culture sector was felt immediately. We have been the first to lose our jobs, to see our exhibitions closed and festivals cancelled, to lose casual event and installation work, to see years of investment and strategy disappear overnight. To date there has been no acknowledgement by the Federal Government of the impacts of COVID-19 on our sector, either in a public statement or a targeted stimulus package. Now, due to previous neglect, we are facing further reduction in our capacity at the precise moment when the rest of the economy is receiving much needed support.

Since the advent of this crisis, it has been a popular refrain that art will prevail, that nothing can keep artists from their craft. It is true that people will respond creatively to change and it is true that art can be a calling, or a vocation, like any kind of work. It is true that art requires talent, skill and tenacity. But it also requires time and resources. It requires wages. It requires real estate, power, gas, water, internet, food, childcare, infrastructure to support it and connect it to publics.

The idea that ‘art will prevail’ is a dangerous pretext to undermine its economic needs. The human spirit will prevail, but continued attacks on the arts sector with funding cuts and reactive changes to its departments and councils will decimate the depth, breadth and quality of our nation’s culture.

Right now, we call on the Federal government to demonstrate its support for the arts, both symbolically and materially. We stand with peers, colleagues and friends across the country to call for:

Urgent allocation of additional funding to the Australia Council to support organisations AND individuals that are under extreme pressure.

Action on the advice received from the peak bodies in the Australian arts sector outlining the industry-specific stimulus measures that are desperately needed to prevent further and sustained damage to Australian culture.

Expansion of Job Keeper and JobSeeker programs to accurately reflect employment conditions for arts and culture workers, many of whom are Sole Traders or work in local government or publically funded organisations.

Advocacy by Government both publicly and to parliamentary colleagues on the significant benefits that flow from the arts and culture sector to the Australian community and economy.

These actions should be coupled with long-term, increased investment in the arts sector amongst broader economic reform as we move past the COVID-19 crisis."

An Open Letter,regarding the Australia Council for the Arts’ Four Year Funding For Organisations 04 April 2020 Semaphore editorial committee Christina Chau,...

03/04/2020

Today we were devastated to learn that our Australia Council for the Arts application for Four Year Funding for organisations was declined.

We've never received multi-year operational funding, and we submitted an application that took more than a year to assemble.

We'll survive, but it's a bummer.

We'd applied for funding that would've paid all our staff (for the very first time!) to continue publishing our quarterly magazine, our books, and our web content, as well as running our events, our prize, and our internal professional development programs which are integral.

It's been an incredibly tough time for arts organisations, artists and arts workers in this country for years now. In 2020 it is so much worse.

We appreciate that everyone at the Australia Council does all they can with the not-enough money they have. More funding is needed – the underfunding of the arts in Australia is a disgrace, culturally and economically.

For now, we truly and heartily congratulate any arts organisation fortunate enough to be successful, as well as those current recipients who've received an extra year of funding.

We'll be heading back to the drawing board; we're more determined than ever to keep on keeping on.

02/04/2020

GUNK BABY by Jamie Marina Lau will be out in August through Brow Books and it will look a little (a lot; exactly) like this:

In the middle of a very strange time in the history of human civilisation, here’s something good: we can today show you the cover of this astonishing forthcoming title of ours, and tell you a whole lot more about it. Any of you who read Jamie’s extraordinary debut novel Pink Mountain on Locust I

01/04/2020

26/03/2020

In this time of COVID-19, now is a great time to subscribe to receive digital editions of THE LIFTED BROW.

It's less expensive than subscribing to the print editions, you can read it on any device, and it's instant gratification.

Get your digital subscription/issue of The Lifted Brow Magazine on Magzter and enjoy reading the magazine on iPad, iPhone, Android devices and the web.

24/03/2020

"My job as the teacher is not to try to get gratifying or salacious feedback about what people are experiencing. Not to milk drama out of the space. It’s incredibly dangerous to seek to nudge people towards having ‘big’ or ‘deep’ feelings or to make them show (you) big feelings, as if that spectacle would be a sign of anything worthwhile. Feelings are people’s own business. They may decide to share them, but prompting such a sharing is risky at best, often a little manipulative and/or desperate. It confuses an understanding about the register at which the ‘work’ is happening and indulges the delusion that it’s somehow about or that it involves the teacher. It’s... uh, a bit gossipy. Transference notwithstanding, the teacher (leader, not celebrity) is a mechanism that enables. Also a person, yes, but in their role of leading, they are mostly serving the situation, not themselves. Perhaps a whimsical lover is a Very Good Time; a whimsical leader is not. That said, to be in the position of leader is also to be relieved of oneself for a time, of one’s own petty and utterly temporary preoccupations. That can be its reward."

'On Leadership' by Antonia Pont.

Art by Oscar Nimmo.

... the sage puts his own person last, and yet it is found in the foremost place; he treats his person as if it were foreign to him, and yet that person is preserved. —Tao Te Ching (James Legge, trans.) Section 7.

24/03/2020

“Excuses are like as****es: Everybody has one, and they’re all full of sh*t⁣
Sometimes you just need a reason to feel alive⁣
Sometimes you just need to take something dead from something alive⁣
& glue the dead thing onto your face⁣
Sometimes you just need to say you’re a writer to feel less like a tourist⁣
to try a slice of life like a new pair of jeans ⁣
I’m Joan Didion, watching a kid on acid in a 60s living room⁣
But I’m the little kid on acid at the same time ⁣
I’m Orlan sticking needles in my skin⁣
screaming to myself over and over again:⁣
It was gold; it was gold”⁣
⁣
‘My Beautiful, Dark, Twisted, Disgusting Cyborg Phantasy’ by Eloise Grills.⁣
⁣
This piece is a peek at what’s to come in Eloise’s forthcoming title BIG BEAUTIFUL FEMALE THEORY (out February 2021).

You can read it now in Issue 45 of The Lifted Brow.

https://www.theliftedbrow.com/shop/the-lifted-brow-45

23/03/2020

The Magabala Books 2020 Daisy Utemorrah Award is now open for entries!

The Daisy Utemorrah Award is for an unpublished manuscript of junior or YA fiction. The Award is open to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples currently living in Australia. Generously supported by the Copyright Agency's Cultural Fund and the State Government of Western Australia, the winner of the award receives $15,000 and a publishing contract with Magabala Books.

Published and unpublished Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers of all ages are eligible to enter with works of junior or YA fiction.

Applications close on 30 April 2020, so get writing.

The 2020 Daisy Utemorrah Award is now open for entries! The Daisy Utemorrah Award is for an unpublished manuscript of junior or YA fiction. The Award is open to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples currently living in Australia. Generously supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural ...

21/03/2020

One of our wonderful editors, Dženana Vucic, spoke with Stack about all things 'The Lifted Brow'.

Have a listen to get an insight into how we run our organisation, the kind of work we publish and why, and our passion for experimental work.

Experimental literature that’s actually good by Steve Watson in March 2020Share on Facebook, Twitter or Copy LinkIllustrationLiteratureWeirdDzenana Vucic is one of the volunteer editors behind The Lifted Brow, the literary magazine that styles itself as “a quarterly attack journal from Australia...

21/03/2020

Just wanted to say a huge congratulations to Maria Tumarkin, one of our Brow Books authors, who has won one of the Windham-Campbell Prizes for Nonfiction. Maria is someone who writes with empathy and integrity, and we are so very excited for her.

We also wanted to send our congratulations to past TLB contributors Bhanu Kapil and Anne Boyer who won a prize for poetry and nonfiction, respectively. They are very deserving winners.

Here are some links to some of the remarkable work of their's that we've published in the past, if you're interested:

Bhanu Kapil - https://bit.ly/2J698A0

Anne Boyer - https://bit.ly/2Uw3bC2

And of course here's where you can grab a copy of Maria's boundary-shifting Brow Books title, AXIOMATIC:

https://browbooks.com/shop/axiomatic-maria-tumarkin

Well done to all of the winners!

Maria Tumarkin's inventive writing on our current historical moment shows a relentless empathy and curiosity about the complexities of our world and its uncertainties.

19/03/2020

"Certain events in our lives catapult us into periods of secession, where we are forced to reexamine the driving narratives upon which we orient our efforts—stories about who we are, what we do and why. Psychological destitution provides the ground upon which we are expected to rebuild ourselves and bolster our resilience. In the midst of upheaval we are absorbed by immediate concerns; we act without full awareness of our own motives and intentions. It is only when we surface, when action has run a certain course, that we are able to articulate the consequences.

Rachel Cusk is captivated by the practice of self-examination, scrutinising the ways in which the stories we tell ourselves shape our beliefs and motives. Whether we perform mother or father, husband or wife, each of us assumes a part. But when these structures collapse, in the case of divorce or death, we can no longer perform the roles or functions we once served within them. We are no longer part of the story that came before. As Cusk describes it, 'we belong more to the world, in all its risky disorder, its fragmentation, its freedom'."

'Secession: A Review of Rachel Cusk's COVENTRY' by Zoe Nutter.

My parents first met in Miami in the early 1980s. My mother was twenty-one and had just left Austria to work as an au pair. As a child, the title confused me and I would mistakenly announce at dinner parties that “my mom used to be a Baroness ”, which she would boldly accept. Now, I wonder wheth...

19/03/2020

Please assist however you can! Cash if you have any, and/or share this in your networks.

https://twitter.com/TheLiftedBrow/status/1240023776860880897

“Commissioning Editor for our magazine, and ex-Managing Editor of Blak Brow, , is stuck overseas with her partner as the world shuts down. They can't get home safe, they can't get home to their kids. If you have any cash to spare, please donate: https://t.co/fm97zHqt8h”

18/03/2020

Our brand new issue is out now – if you haven't got a copy yet, either by grabbing one from a bookstore or newsagent, or ordering one from our website, or subscribing, what are you waiting for?

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

Officially in stores on March 2nd, but sent to all subscribers and pre-orderers before then.

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 s*x lives, guest edited by TLB founder Ronnie Scott;

Georgia Mill elucidates the invisible but entrenched barriers to q***r 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 Perković’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’ s*x+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, Zane Zlemeša, Ben Constantine, Emilie Walsh, Christine Obst, Tom Groenestyn, and Oscar Nimmo.