The island continent has created an archipelago of incarceration spanning from South East Asia, Micronesia and Melanesia in the Pacific, the Indian Ocean and across mainland Australia. This issue of Southerly, titled Writing Through Fences, is devoted entirely to the work of past and present refugees in these detention centres.

The records of their experiences are devastating; their creative responses, across genres and media, are astounding. The issue also includes responses from Australian writers, activists, essayists and students, who engage with refugee writing as well as the practices and consequences of refugee incarceration.

Writing Through Fences is guest edited by the writer-activists Hani Abdile, Behrouz Boochani, Janet Galbraith and Omid Tofighian. Two of these editors have direct experience of Australian refugee detention. Three have been displaced and exiled. All four have worked for years with refugees as translators, enablers and publishers to bring the creative voices of refugees into public view and circulation. This issue presents the greatest range of new refugee writing assembled to date in Australia.