EDITORIAL
Borders perforate our continents into countries, then further cross-hack them into states, electorates and suburbs. We erect fences to mark out the pieces of earth we’ve paid money for, and towering walls to enclose or prohibit others. We invoke ‘us’, and ‘them’.
We use barbed wire, chain link, brick, white picket or dynamite. Our national identities, the colours of our flags and of our sporting jerseys, the time on our watches, our private habits and public behaviours, our fears and prejudices are deeply engrained in our characters. Each one of us are the sum of the borders we’ve constructed.
So where would we be, without the edges that define us?
Welcome to Issue #13, ‘Borderlines’, an issue that explores the margins and frontiers with which we surround ourselves. This collection of fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry by our current students and alumni take the reader on a journey to physical, political and psychological barriers and margins.
A young boy in Japanese-occupied Batavia bravely attempts an expedition to rescue his father in Jacqueline Greig’s ‘Along Enemy Lines’. Tanya Davies tells of the regret and melancholy of a woman submitting to marry without love on the shores of Cornwall, in ‘The Wave that Breaks’. In ‘No Woman’s Land’, Teresa Peni reflects on the boundaries of feminism, motherhood and privacy in an afternoon at the McIver Ladies’ Baths. The tenuous partition between life and death is explored through a posthumous reflection, and at a dying mother’s hospital bedside. We embark on migratory journeys away from the perimeters of one’s own identity and home, butt up against the concrete wall of white nationalism, and scale fences constructed by the anxious mind.
Many thanks to Managing Editor Jane Messer, and to our digital artist Sam Van Vliet. Without their support and contributions, this issue would not have been possible.
It brings me great pleasure to present Issue #13 in a digital medium, which defies the constraints of print circulation boundaries. I invite you to read, enjoy and share this edition, with the hope that these stories spread out over the horizon.
By Laura Neill
Issue #13 Editor-in-Chief
