Australia’s second-oldest literary journal, Meanjin, is being shut down today, Crikey can reveal.
The decision was made by Melbourne University Publishing (MUP) on “purely financial grounds”, the organisation said in a statement. However, Crikey understands Meanjin has also been under sustained pressure from the Melbourne University Council board.
MUP confirmed that Meanjin’s two staff members, editor Esther Anatolitis and deputy editor Eli McLean, were not involved in the decision and have been made redundant. Thursday is their final working day at the journal, established in 1940 in Brisbane before later moving to Melbourne under the University of Melbourne.
Crikey approached Anatolitis on questions regarding potential legal processes, as well as claims of board pressure and financial concerns being behind the publication’s closure, but she did not offer a response.
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In an internal email sent to Meanjin staff, seen by Crikey, MUP CEO and publisher Foong Ling Kong said, “This decision was not made lightly. For 85 years, Meanjin has been a linchpin of the Australian literary landscape and the site of significant national conversations, launching the careers of so many. The financial pressures of publishing a literary magazine in today’s world, however, are inescapable and considerable, and the readership is shrinking.”
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Louise Adler, then CEO of MUP when Meanjin was placed under its administration in 2007, told Crikey, “The literary magazine landscape in Australia has slowly been reduced over the past decade or so due to a declining subscriber base and a lack of funding from government agencies. Institutions like Meanjin, and it is an institution, are easy to close down. Their replacements much harder to create.
“Meanjin has had a remarkable history, a record of publishing truly important essays and a succession of brilliant editors from Clem Christensen to Jonathan Green. Given the coffers of the University of Melbourne, one would have thought the paltry amount Meanjin requires on a yearly basis was small coin for the intellectual contribution the magazine, at its best, can make to our literary culture.”
The ABC’s Jonathan Green, a former Meanjin editor, said, “The death of Meanjin is a loss to the country’s cultural memory and a loss to those writers who might have been part of its literary present and future. This is a magazine established during World War II as a bulwark against the Australian tendency to anti-intellectualism, our national habit of punching down on gentle creative expression.
“This is a bad call by the University of Melbourne. Yes, the university has supported Meanjin since 1945, but in my view it had an obligation to keep doing that, a sign of its commitment to Australian literary writing, to something that has endured beyond the passing thrills of the here and now.
“Meanjin’s financial demand is trivial … a few hundred thousand dollars … the cultural loss of its death is as significant as it is tragic.”
Author and chair of the Australian Society of Authors Sophie Cunningham, also a former Meanjin editor, said, “I’m extremely sad to hear that the University of Melbourne is closing Australia’s second-oldest literary journal.
“This reinforces my sense that universities are no longer spaces that support or nurture literature or the arts in this country. Certainly universities have, in the last several years, shown themselves unable to manage robust debates or the complexities of freedom of speech.”
Jonathan Dunk, co-editor of Overland, told Crikey, “Literary journals like Meanjin are the living pulse of Australian writing, providing forms of value that far outstrip their comparatively meagre cost.
“This is an appallingly short-sighted act of cultural vandalism, which will deprive writers of vital opportunities and irreparably impoverish Australian society. Many in the literary community are questioning the transparency of the MUP board’s reasoning, for sadly obvious reasons in the current climate of intimidation.”
In 2007, administration of Meanjin was controversially shifted from the University of Melbourne to MUP, with literary critics such as Peter Craven writing, “The University of Melbourne has decided to apply financial tests to a non-profit-making publication that is in practice subsidised by generations of editors who have edited it.”
“It is likely to destroy Meanjin,” he wrote.
A statement from MUP chair Professor Warren Bebbington provided to Crikey said, “The literary magazine Meanjin will cease publication after its final issue in December 2025. This is a matter of deep regret for all at Melbourne University Press, as Meanjin has reached its 85th year of a distinguished history, the past 17 years as an MUP imprint.
“The decision was made on purely financial grounds, the board having found it no longer viable to produce the magazine ongoing. The two part-time staff of Meanjin were not involved in the decision, which led to their being made redundant this week.”
When approached by Crikey, Copyright Agency said, “Meanjin has played a vital role in shaping Australia’s literary landscape, offering formative publishing opportunities for writers and helping to launch many literary careers. This was part of an important tradition in which universities, including through their presses, would promote and foster Australia’s cultural activities.
“Through our Cultural Fund, we have proudly supported Meanjin over many years. This support has helped bring the voices of many important writers to the page, and most recently contributed to the publication of a series of essays by First Nations Elders. The closure of such an essential journal represents a great loss to the Australian literary sector.”
Meanjin was first published as the Meanjin Papers by editor Clem Christensen in December 1940 in Brisbane, taking its name from the traditional Turrbal and Yuggera word for the spearhead-shaped area on which the city of Brisbane is located. (However, as Yagarabul Edler Gaja Kerry Charlton has written in Meanjin, the true spelling of the word is a much more complex question.)
The journal has long influenced Australia’s cultural and literary discourse, and indeed our literature is tied up with its history. Over the past eight decades, it has published Australian literary titans such as Helen Garner, Patrick White, Gerald Murnane and A.A. Phillips, the latter of whom coined in its papers the now-infamous term “cultural cringe”. Meanjin has also pioneered the work of many Indigenous writers, such as Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Alexis Wright, Tony Birch, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Ellen van Neerven, to name only a few.
Meanjin’s upcoming and final edition is to celebrate its 85th anniversary, with special essays planned by the likes of Bruce Pascoe, poet П. O. and Ellen van Neerven.
This story will continue to be updated.