Voiceworks is turning a corner with Issue 135, ‘Bend’: welcoming a new editor, Joel Keith, and designer, Alex Stevenson. As William Carlos Williams says: ‘It is spring!’

Dhishni de Silva’s brushstrokes twist and curl across this issue’s cover; Indigo Colquhoun’s illustrations are woven throughout; Samuel Pringle’s comic, Fold, asks us to bend the very pages on which it’s printed.

As the weather warms, our contributors stretch and step outside. Phoebe Hancox and Teresa Ho observe animals—a friendly bird, a mummified shark—in unlikely places, while Eve Tramacchi O’Keeffe and Isabel Greenslade remember loved ones who’ve passed away, and the landscapes in which their spirits live on.

As the birds and bees get busy, so do the characters in this issue’s stories! Bridie Noonan writes daringly, movingly, about an affair between a breast cancer patient and a trans man, and Atari Hayes paints a fragmentary, lyrical portrait of gay love on the fringes of China’s Cultural Revolution.

And, as is fast becoming tradition, we have interviews: EdCommer-turned-author Madison Griffiths shares Sweet Nothings with Elizabeth Bourke, and onetime Voiceworks contributor Micaela Sahhar talks poetry, protest and Find Me at the Jaffa Gate with our editor.

We hope you enjoy taking a turn through Voiceworks #135, ‘Bend’!