My body as a House of UnAustralian Activities. Australia as a body, with a soul to search.

For generations of settler Australian creatives, Berlin has been a rite of passage, a mythical promised land of danger and giddying freedom. Is this obsession with the ruins of Europe a way of forgetting our own violent past?

Malaysia Showcase: Malaysia is a country of many cultures at once. ‘Rojak’ means ‘mixed’, and has come to describe the jumble of languages we speak. It was only years after leaving the country that I began to see this hybridity as a uniquely Malaysian part of my identity.

We think nothing of actively pursuing romantic and sexual partners, but why is finding new friends still so awkward? Lonely in a new city, I turned to dating apps—and found among its users a yearning for intimacy more platonic than erotic.

When my friend died in a tragic accident, most people only knew him as a headline, or a cautionary tale. But though his story ended too soon, I am trying to reflect on the beginnings.

Do our homes make us lonely? As apartments surpass houses for the first time, cities around the world are beginning to grapple with a growing social isolation epidemic. Can the Australian suburban dream keep up with a booming population?

Indonesia Showcase: Indonesian literature has helped me contextualise and understand the problems in our society – yet I find I am more comfortable writing in English. What does it mean to only have the courage to criticise my country in the language of another?

For writers who ascribe to the practice of ‘method writing’, the ability to fully inhabit a character’s tastes, habits and personality can be creatively rewarding and exhilarating. But is the practice sustainable? What happens when method writing goes too far?

A young woman whiles away her summer calling strangers from the paper, waiting for her sister to return from who-knows-where, waiting for life to get moving – until Whitman comes by looking to sell a crossbow.

Never before in the history of the planet has one species caused such monumental environmental upheaval, and been aware of doing so. How do we process the complex emotions that accompany life in the Anthropocene? Can a walk along a damaged Sydney waterway help us find small cracks of hope amid despair?