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This article is part of our February edition. Read the editor’s letter to see what other fantastic writing has just been published. If you’re annoyed that it’s paywalled, then that means you wanted to read it, which means you value it. These writers get paid for what they do because their work is valuable. If you like that this type of independent media exists, please back it!
The piece you’re reading now is by Astrid Edwards. Astrid is the host of The Garret: Writers on Writing and has interviewed more than 200 of Australia’s most prominent writers and publishers. She is a teacher in the Associate Degree of Professional Writing and Editing at RMIT University and sometimes judges literary prizes, including the 2023 Stella Prize. In 2023 she began a PhD at the University of Melbourne exploring potential and perceived barriers to publishing and selling climate fiction in Australia. In 2021 Astrid contributed to the anthology Growing Up Disabled in Australia and made her debut appearance on Q+A in 2021.
Astrid writes for News & Reviews Magazine every month. These are her last pieces, from the August, September, October, November, and December editions:
We all need a place to call home and we don’t all have it. Nor will we, given the state of policy and politics.
I moved from inner city Melbourne to regional Victoria in February 2022. The experience of lockdowns, the possibility of hybrid work, and the impossibility of buying a home in the city pushed my partner and I to bring forward a previously long-term dream—to move to the country.
We sold the tiny inner-city apartment that we bought seven years prior because the agent who sold our neighbour’s unit knocked on our door and offered to get us a great price. He did. It was enough for us to secure a deposit for a house, albeit not a house in a metropolitan area. I’m writing this to illustrate the vagaries of the property market. It benefited us but it no doubt hurt someone else in the process.
We are part of the problem.
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