Griffith Review 65: Crimes and Punishments

Ends on February 4, 2019

What is it about crime stories that make people hunger for them? The volume of content produced in these genres – from the pages of mysteries and thrillers to audio and visual dramas and reconstructions – hints at a primal and deeply ingrained fascination with the darker side of human nature. 

This fascination is often rooted in fictional material. But the way that crimes play out in the real world – and the ways they are dealt with by both our justice systems and our differing approaches to and arenas for punishment – are often more complex, compelling and shocking than the most complicated imagined plots. 

Beyond the impact of individual cases, broader discussions about justice and punishment continue to attract attention. Debates on prison privatisation build on one hand, with debates for their abolition building on the other. Justice reinvestment seeks to redirect spending from the prison system back to communities, where it can be used to reduce crime in the first place. A growing number of communities are tackling violence and crime as public health issues – and the power of the bystander approach speaks to roles and responsibilities beyond the traditional divide of victim and perpetrator. 

The advent of the internet has opened up new landscapes and opportunities for fraud, while the global webs that underpin both perpetrations and apprehensions continue to expand and evolve in our hyper-connected world. Futurists predict courts where AI automates the processes of legal reasoning. And the rights of nature movement may upend our sense of adversarial relationships to one where landscapes can make claims as legal entities.

If colonial Australia sprang, in part, from changing ideas of crime and punishment in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, how do the still-evolving narratives of crime, punishment and justice impact on who we are now, and on the kind of society we would like to be?

Griffith Review 65: Crimes and Punishments invites stories that brush with the law: from felons to forensics, from true crime to social justice, from corruption and criminology to Koori courts and other revolutionary reforms. We seek essays, reportage, and stories – fiction and non-fiction – as well as memoir and poetry that delve into the narratives, the policies and the procedures of the myriad aspects of crime, justice and punishment in Australia today. 

Full submissions only.

Submissions close: Monday, 4 February 2019
Publication date: Tuesday, 6 August 2019

Submissions

Griffith Review is designed to foster and inform public debate and to provide a bridge between the expertise of specialists and the curiosity of readers. We wish to give writers the space to explore issues at greater length, with more time for reflection than is possible under the relentless pressure of daily events. Our aim is to provide the opportunity for established and emerging writers, thinkers and artists to tease out complexity and contradiction and propose new ways of thinking and seeing. Check out our writers' guidelines for further information.

Writers' guidelines

Griffith Review is published with curious, well-informed readers in mind. It aims to enrich public discussion, to provide a platform for both established and emerging writers and thinkers to publish well-written, informed and insightful writing.

General

Each edition is topical, so we do not accept general, unsolicited submissions that do not fit with an upcoming theme (see the below section on multimedia essays, for which may find exception to this). Future editions can be found at griffithreview.com/submit-to-griffith-review, along with the link to our submissions management software, Submittable. Have a read of some previous editions to get a general feel for what we like to publish – our entire back catalogue is free to access at griffithreview.com/editions (all 1,500 pieces). We like new and creative ideas, and we like you, the writer. Don’t be afraid to let yourself shine through in your writing. Griffith Review is not an academic journal (although academics may be able to obtain research credits for their writing), and while we often tackle complex ideas, we are committed to giving our writers space for their own voice. Give us your provocations and opinions, so long as they are considered and backed up. Pieces generally range from 2,000 to 6,000 words, unless previously negotiated with the editors.

Essay

Essays are the staple of each Griffith Review edition. Lyrical essays, researched essays, creative non-fiction, analytical pieces – we publish them all.

Memoir

Personal essays and ‘a letter to’ will be published under memoir. We love the genre for the more personal element it lends to our themes – keep in mind that we do want the reader to take something from your piece in relation to the theme. Let’s say the aim is ‘subjective universality’.

Reportage 

This can be the most incisive way to address a topic, and we certainly encourage it. If your investigating turns up any information that might have even the most remote legal implications, we ask that you have permissions sorted before coming to us.

Fiction

The beating heart of creative literature, though as a culture and ideas quarterly we tend to only publish at most three pieces of fiction per edition, with the exception of novella or fiction editions (separate guidelines are generally published for these). Good fiction writing stands out immediately – polish, proofread and repeat.

Poetry

We don’t publish a lot of poetry, though we do like to publish it where possible. Consider how necessary it is for you to submit an entire suite of poems, unless they are remarkably short (though haiku aren’t high on our to-print list). Poets can send in up to five individual poems to be considered per submission, each no more than two pages long – and so long as they are all (at least loosely) to theme.

Indigenous issues

Writing about the lives and affairs of Australia's Indigenous peoples is important for fostering conversation and understanding, but it is something that needs to be done with awareness and sensitivity. We encourage writers pursuing this area to read the 'Guidelines for the ethical publishing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors and research from those communities' from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, which suggest ways for 'writers and publishers [to] create new works in ways that are culturally respectful and appreciative of the diversity and richness of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and their histories and cultures'.

Format

We only accept online submissions as editable word documents (preferably Microsoft Word). Use 12-point Times New Roman type (we don’t score on personal font preference) with 1.5 lines spacing. The piece needs to begin with your full name, a title (and for essay, memoir and reportage, a subtitle) and a word count. We do not accept hard-copy submission – it’s fine if you still prefer to write by hand or typewriter, but typesetting has long since moved into the digital realm and someone need to transcribe your piece. Include a short bio (50–100 words) at the end.

If you use references, incorporate them into the body of the text where possible – we do not publish references or footnotes in the print edition, only online. Not in-text referencing or footnotes, but written out – that is, not (Macfarlane, 12) or 1 Robert Macfarlane, Mountains of the Mind, p. 43, but, ‘In Mountains of the Mind (Granta, 2003), Robert Macfarlane says…’. If this becomes too awkward (you have too many long references to incorporate), make your references endnotes in the Harvard style.

For spellings and grammar, Griffith Review follows the Macquarie Dictionary and our own in-house style guide (available on request). With very few exceptions, we adhere to strict Australian-English usage.

Interactive essays

Using the Atavist platform, we have started publishing interactive, multimedia essays online that range between 2,000 and 15,000 words – previous publications can be viewed at https://griffithreview.atavist.com. We are open to proposals for unique and lively stories to fit this format, but key to their success is the prefix 'multi-'. Multiple forms of media (high-res images, high-quality illustrations, gifs, videos, audio files, graphs, Flickr albums, tweets, Instagrams) must be supplied or sourced by the writer, preferably in a larger quantity than required so we have some room to work.

Contracts

If your work is accepted for print and/or digital publication, we will acquire the rights to it for three months from the date of publication of the edition, and it will be archived on our website. The copyright is then yours, but any subsequent publication must acknowledge the work’s initial appearance in our pages. Fees are negotiated by word length, except for contributors employed by universities who, are paid a flat fee. Once we’ve agreed to publish and negotiated any editing changes, you will be sent a contract and payment will be made within twenty-one days of returning a completed version along with an invoice.

For any enquiries, please email griffithreview@griffith.edu.au .