“This current reality we’re living in right now, it’s volatile, to say the least,” Winnie Dunn tells me. As the General Manager of Sweatshop Literacy Movement, an editor, and a soon-to-be-published author, she has just released Another Australia, an anthology she describes as a “mind map” or “blueprint” of Australia’s current issues.

If the concept sounds familiar, that’s because this collection of essays serves as a follow-up to the critically acclaimed book After Australia, in which twelve bold Indigenous writers and writers of color were asked to imagine Australia 25 years into the future. This time, Another Australia brings us back to the present, featuring twelve more First Nations writers and writers of color who chart a path forward that exists outside the dominant white gaze. To set the tone, Dunn challenged the contributors with the question: “What lies beneath, behind, and beside the country we think we know?”

Opening the anthology is a prologue by Nardi Simpson, author of the Stella Prize-longlisted novel Song of the Crocodile. As Dunn reminds me, this piece is written entirely in Yuwaalaraay, illustrating what it truly means when we say, “always was, always will be.” What follows is a range of experimental writings from contributors including visual artist and author of The Mother Wound, Amani Haydar, as well as Shirley Le, Sara Saleh, Omar Musa, Osman Faruqi, Shankari Chandran, Declan Fry, L-FRESH the LION, Mohammed Massoud Morsi, Sisonke Msimang, and Anne Marie Te Whiu.

Below, RUSSH caught up with Winnie Dunn to discuss the new anthology and why bell hooks’ philosophy continues to resonate today.

What is your approach to editing, specifically with Another Australia?

Editing involves taking apart words and digging deeper into their meaning. It’s about uncovering the layers beneath what a writer presents because their writing isn’t just surface-level. For Another Australia, my approach with all twelve writers was to constantly encourage them to “dig deeper” or ask, “What does this mean?” I often think about that quote from bell hooks, where she says, “Degrees of literacy determine how we see what we see.” I wanted to understand fully what the writers were conveying from their perspectives.

The twelve people I invited are, in a way, my mentors. They were the people of color leading the way in Australian literature before I came onto the scene. I already knew they were expert writers, so my role as an editor was to ensure each sentence contributed something original to our understanding. That was my input.

What was the idea behind Another Australia? How is this anthology different from After Australia?

It’s rare for people of color and First Nations people to live fully in the present. We’re often either haunted by the past or worried about the future. With Another Australia, I wanted to focus on the here and now—the current myths and barriers in Australia.

As Professor Ghassan Hage says, there is a fantasy of white supremacy in Australia that centers whiteness and white people in conversations about race and identity. But that’s not the reality. As a Tongan, I believe conversations about race, racism, and identity should happen in a circle, or what Tongans call Talanoa, where everyone is equal, and each person contributes their perspective to solving a complex issue. Another Australia was about expanding the circle that began with After Australia.

What has been the best part about editing Another Australia?

Building deeper connections with writers in Australia whom I greatly admire.

What did you learn from working with these writers on Another Australia?

I learned that mastery of one’s craft is unique to each writer. Every writer has their style and flair, and it was humbling for me as an editor to understand the nuances of each writer’s approach. For example, Declan Fry, a First Nations writer and cultural critic, is very interested in punctuation and grammar and how these elements can be as crucial to the story as the words themselves. He doesn’t even use speech marks.

On the other hand, Omar Musa writes poetry where everything is lowercase. His work is exaggerated and accentuated uniquely, and he complements his poetry with visual art. He even created a whole cut print to accompany his poem, merging written and visual art forms. It’s these kinds of creative approaches that stand out.

How does Another Australia compare to other anthologies you’ve edited?

With Sweatshop and its anthologies, we usually focus on emerging writers—though not everyone likes that term. I see it as hopeful like flowers blooming. The Big Black Thing: Chapter One was the first anthology I co-edited with Mohammed Ahmad in 2017. It showcased writers who had been working with Sweatshop for years and a new generation of school-age writers. It was about going into schools and teaching kids like me the importance of representation in Australian literature, where they have often been underrepresented or misrepresented—like in my case, where Chris Lilley’s portrayal of Tongan Australians in Jonah from Tonga was a big misrepresentation of my identity.

This is why African American feminist and scholar bell hooks talks about the power of seeing yourself reflected in someone who holds a position of authority or occupies a space you aspire to enter. She gives the example of Barack Obama bending down to let a young African American child touch his hair because the child asked, “Is your hair like mine?” I take that responsibility seriously—to be a mirror for the next generation of writers of color and young Pacific Islander writers, helping them reclaim their stories and embrace the hard work of being a writer, loving the craft, and striving to be the best storytellers they can be.

That’s how our anthologies differ from Another Australia. With Another Australia, it’s about those who paved the way for me. The ones who served as mirrors for me.

Another Australia is the second installment in what we hope will be a three-part series from Sweatshop in partnership with Affirm Press. You can order the anthology through Affirm Press, Sweatshop, or most bookstores.