We live in polycrisis: climate collapse, fascism resurgent. Genocide, livestreamed and unimpeded. Eroding democracy. Rising censorship. Cozzie livs, no housing. Family violence and femicide. Settler colonialism: structure, not event.
As crises multiply, so too do our cultural imaginaries buckle and strain. Liberalism and its promise of progress; capitalism and its fantasy of endless growth; whiteness and its bromides of multiculturalism and reconciliation—none can sustain the weight of this moment. The old narratives have collapsed; we dwell among the ruins. The question now becomes: how to imagine and live otherwise?
Lantana is a new literary magazine that orients itself to this task. Through essays, poetry, comment, memoir and reviews, we survey the ruins and reach for new stories. Introduced species, spreader of mischief, defiantly beautiful: Lantana is a mirror of our time that unsettles the stories that made it.
Here are words for otherwise.
Our mission
To provide an independent platform for writing and ideas in so-called Australia. No institutional affiliation. No censorship.
To nurture literary ambition, pleasure and community. Let’s have fun and get weird together.
To dream and build our collective liberation. We are feminist, queer, neurodivergent, anti-colonial, anti-racist, pro-Palestinian, anti-capitalist.
Who are we?
Founding editor Dr Yves Rees (they/them) is an award-winning writer, historian and podcaster based in Naarm.
