Here and Then - Digital Issue 2 2025
This year’s issue – Here and Then – is the embodiment of the very existence of Visible Ink.
Here we have its second official digital issue, accessible on every electronic screen, be it computer, mobile or tablet – or, hell, even the tiny eye-searing screen of a smart watch. Here, en dashes and em dashes are determined by unicode rather than the length of their namesake letter, and production meetings on Microsoft Teams allow you to work closely with people you’ve never met face to face before. Here, Visible Ink has grown larger than Victoria.
But Then – all the way back in 1989 – Visible Ink was a humble printer-paper magazine put together by eager students desiring to give shape not only to the voices of emerging writers, but to the hopes and dreams of student editors, designers and creatives. Then, deadlines were determined by the printing supplier’s closing hours, and the final product was the feeling of 90 gsm paper between your fingertips. Then, Visible Ink made its first step into Melbourne’s literary landscape.
Congratulations to this year’s team who continue this legacy, taking the cumulative knowledge of not just their own studies, but the learnings of Visible Ink members before them, to produce an anthology that walks the tightrope of time and space. May your time creating Digital Issue 2 become a memory you look back on with pride and wonder, and encourage you to keep going.
And congratulations to the emerging writers brave enough to bare a part of their soul to the hungry gaze of the masses. In a theme as intimate as Here and Then, thank you for allowing Visible Ink to be part of your Here, and, hopefully, your Then as you grow in your creative careers.
Digital Issue 2 is both a collection and reflection as these writers explore the power of time: the ripple effects of a single leaf floating on the surface of a pond, or a cliff crumbling into an unsuspecting ocean. As Digital Issue 1 showed us, the passage of time can be a painful loss, but also an incredible revival.
Readers are invited to consume, to imagine, to challenge the ideas presented to them in Digital Issue 2 ... and perhaps even contemplate their own Then that has led them to this place, to this moment and to this page.
Maybe one day you’ll join us Here.
Introduction by Sophia Chan (2024 Visible Ink Editor-in-Chief)
READ
Fiction Flash Fiction Non-Fiction Poetry
Thank you to the 2025 Visible Ink team
Executive Committee
Joyce Protacio - Editor-In-Chief
Otto Riddel - Secretary
Amber Hall - Managing Editor
Editorial
Christine Bayley
Edwina Berry
Katrina Bosanquet
Abby Jackson
Jihan Mirza
Madeline McFarlane
Talisha Ohanessian
Anastasia Parker
Melissa Reed
Adriana Salib
Rowan Williams
Rhiannon Bentley
Submissions
Maz Blanch
Clare Dixon
Katya Dugec
Dulcie Evans
Matt Freeman
Mason Henshall
Persephone Daisy Hunter
Claire Jenkins
Communications and Design
Nadjella Mendoza
Alice Neil
Chance John
Charlie Robertson