Got the return-to-work blues after the long-long weekend? Feeling the after effects of holiday eating binges? Well never fear, we have just the thing to pick up your spirits: we’re excited to announce that Issue Nine is launched today!

You can purchase it here or subscribe to the journal here.

Five of the issue’s pieces are now available online for free: click through to read them.

The edition leads with Greg Foyster’s ‘The Big Pitch: Selling Advertising to the Public’ where he exposes the machinations, motivations and manipulations of the advertising industry – and how it is destroying the planet. Wayne Macauley reflects upon an alternative Australian classic The Plains, and – continuing the reflective geographical theme – Luke Meinzen writes about travel writing and his time in Mongolia.

In fiction, Toni Jordan, Krissy Kneen and Carmel Bird offer new short works with an animal-centric bent; and for our interview, we speak with the genre-bending short story writer Kelly Link. And don’t forget reviews on Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy and a look at Nirvana’s Nevermind twenty years on.

Go forth and enjoy!