Who We Are

Portside Review is an international digital journal emerging from the foam of the Indian Ocean. We publish stories from and for these coastal homes.

Portside Review has special connection to Boorloo (Perth), Mumbai, and Singapore, and forms an archipelago from Kinjarling to Karachi to Cape Town. We take in lots of cities, towns, countries along the way, sailing and swimming and being swept up in currents and tides.

Portside Review is an act of cross-cultural community creation, being pulled together by a team who collaborate, who labour for a greater cause than the individual alone. We come from many places with many histories, and yet, we are all mixed up, like the waves that lap and lap again on shores right here and across the world as well.

Our Team

Portside Review is made up of many different people from all over the globe. We’re a dynamic group of people working together on Boorloo/Perth, and beyond, to bring you the best writing from the Indian Ocean.

  • Robert Wood

    Robert is responsible for curating each digital publication, commissioning writers, and the creative direction of the journal.

  • Logan Griffiths

    Logan manages communications, social media, and the production of each digital issue.

  • Guest Editors

    Rain Chudori, Cher Tan, Nina Chabra, Sampurna Chattarji, Ko Ko Thett, Christopher Lin, John Mateer, Brandon K. Liew, Kieren Kresevic Salazar

    Editorial Interns/Assistants

    Syarisa Yasin, Asley Saito-Abdullahi, Caitlin Barrow, Leila Marshall, Zahina Shah, Alyssa Carroll, Abbey Carson, Quinton D’Lima, Sofia Scaturro, Eleisha Perez, William Huang, Maggie Leung, Lauren Pratt and Sachini Poogoda.

Why We’re Here

Portside Review is a creative project from Centre for Stories. We are housed in their building, staffed by their workers, and funded through their kindness. Like them, we are committed to diversity, equity, justice, healing and connection, and are inspired by stories and storytellers. Centre for Stories empowers people whose experiences and perspectives are often marginalised. This includes Indigenous and First Nations, refugees, migrants, people of colour, people who identify as LGBTQIA+, older people, and people living with disability. They present high quality stories and promote excellent craft, unique perspectives and ethical values.

Funding

In recognition of the routes and currents and tides that connect us all, Portside Review acknowledges that money matters to writing and culture. It circulates or can be buried on islands of your choosing or traded like spices wherever the wind blows. It allows us to buy wooden boats in glass bottles, to knot ropes, to pay for parking when we build sandcastles. We are able to pay our contributors at regionally competitive rates due to our funding agencies, which work in Australian dollars and are situated in developed cities.

We say thank you to our parent organisation Centre for Stories and to the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries of the State Government of Western Australia, Creative Australia and the Founders Circle. We thank our Portside Review subscribers who fund contributor payments.

Portside Review also knows it is in a position of privilege; there is a necessity but also a responsibility to be a good fellow sailor if not a lifeguard patrolling the water between the flags. That is why we give contributors the option to donate part or all of their fee to a worthy cause that fits our values. We also make a small monthly donation to those organisations ourselves.