The Bootleg Bundle Issue
Design by Stella Theocharides, printed by Tree Paper Gallery.
The idea for this issue was worked out when Nick—the best-dressed primary school teacher I have ever encountered, who began the digital art library Bootleg Bundle at the start of 2024—and I met for coffee in North Melbourne, one morning in January. It was forty-five degrees, and windy; afterwards, waiting in the sun for the tram, I felt rather like an ant on which a cruel experiment was being played with a magnifying glass, and perhaps a hairdryer.
The pitch with which I approached the issue’s contributors—EdCommers, friends of the mag, and contributors to my first two issues as editor, ‘Bend’ and ‘Quits!’—was: Send us anything; but if you’re struggling to choose, send a piece you love that has been rejected for publication elsewhere. We all have such pieces; at least, I imagine we do—pieces that are weird or perplexing or slight, that nevertheless lie quite close to our hearts, perhaps for the very reasons they have been determined unfit to print—and an issue full of them would, I imagined, end up uncommonly varied, surprising and free: free to be bold, confusing, angry, lovestruck, camp, inconsequential. Plus, it would mean those pieces did get to be published, somewhere—a fact which would hopefully make it worth the writers’ while, given their contributions would be unpaid, with all proceeds going to El Rahman Inc.
El Rahman (for which each wave of Bootleg Bundle has raised funds) is a community-funded non-profit that helps find housing for Palestinian refugees in Naarm—providing them with furniture, white goods, clothing, food and more, while covering their rental and utility expenses until they are able to financially support themselves. El Rahman also assists victims of domestic violence, providing financial assistance to people in need, and delivers projects such as youth programs and camps, toy drives, and community pantries.
A huge thank you to all the writers who have chosen to donate their work to the issue: past Voiceworks contributors Violet Day-Joyce and Bridie Noonan; EdCommers Maya Crombie, Nadia Lazich Harari, Eve Tramacchi O’Keeffe, Seb Petroni, Sharyn Sale and Faye Tang; Aotearoa poet Loretta Riach; and friends of the mag Adalya Nash Hussein and Hasib Hourani—who, since their time at Voiceworks, have gone on to found the brilliant, multidisciplinary Loom Literary Journal.
Thanks as well to past contributor Jet Darmansjah Aitken, whose artwork ‘Cicadas’ accompanies Eve’s poem; to friend of the mag and founding editor of Artery, Joseph Cook, whose photo sequence begins the issue; and to EdCommer Stella Theocharides, whose beautiful Riso-printed vegetables adorn the issue’s cover.
A special thank you must go to past Voiceworks illustrators Indigo Colquhoun (#135: ‘Bend’) and Jonathon Fisher (#136: ‘Quits!’), each of whom generously donated a whole suite of illustrations, which accompany most of the pieces here. Both are brilliantly talented; their art has turned, as if by magic, an exciting but rather grab-bag assortment into a beautiful bouquet.
I’ll spare us going into all the ways in which shit’s bad right now—we know them; hopefully each of us, in our minor ways, are trying to do something about them. After all, they aren’t preordained, and they need not be permanent: they are simply the present state of the world we all share, for which we are all responsible—for which we remain responsible, as we read, write, protest, make dinner, make love, stay inside. Take this issue in the spirit of its cover: like a small basket full of produce, from neighbour to neighbour. Free Palestine; we’ll see you in the street.
To read the issue:
Donate $20 or more to El Rahman Inc
Screenshot your receipt
Send your receipt to bootlegbundle@proton.me in exchange for the password
Use the password to access the issue!