Booksellers establish new literary journal

In Victoria, Mornington Peninsula booksellers Celeste Deliyiannis and Emily Westmoreland have created a new annual literary journal in response to Covid-19.

PENinsula will incorporate photography, short fiction, nature writing and personal essays to showcase the landscape and creative community of the Mornington Peninsula. According to a statement from the founders, the aim of the journal is to ‘motivate and sustain’ the local creative community at a time when it is cut off from Melbourne CBD’s artistic culture due to Covid-19.

‘We have a wonderfully creative community here on the Peninsula, particularly of writers, but it’s a relatively quiet one,’ said Deliyiannis, the journal’s publisher and editor. ‘We want to give writers a chance to showcase their talents, but more importantly their ideas, their feelings and their thoughts with one another. Community fosters creativity, as creativity does community.’

Co-publisher and production manager Emily Westmoreland said, ‘I don’t know many other lit mags in Australia that celebrate landscape and nature writing and a lot of other literary journals are based in Melbourne. It can be disheartening as a young writer from the Peninsula feeling like you have to travel into the city to have your voice have relevance. But, the Mornington Peninsula has such a lot to offer, and I don’t just mean in terms of landscape.’

PENinsula is expected to be published both in print and online in October 2020. Submissions are open and will close at midnight, 31 July. For more information, see the PENinsula website.

Category: Local news