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James Bradley has written an extensive survey of literary journals in Australia in the latest Australian Literary Review, and Cutwater comes up early on. Bradley writes that "sometimes, particularly in magazines such as Sam Twyford-Moore's engaging and exuberant start-up, Cutwater, this can mean an emphasis on new and often formally innovative work by younger writers; writing that draws it's energy from the urgency of its relationship to those writers' lives. Cutwater and its ilk are the James Deans of the literary world: sometimes joyous, sometimes angry, at once impossible and delightful, ephemeral and curiously timeless in their enactment of the the freedoms and ambitions of youth. And though Cutwater is a professional looking production, such magazines also exist on a spectrum that extends outwards, into the underworld of zines, amateur and magnificently idiosyncratic publications with circulations of a few dozen or a few hundred."

You can read the entire article here...
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/growing-content/story-e6frg8nf-1225804254603

Regular Voiceworks contributor and all-round nice guy Sam Cooney has gone all out with a brilliant review of Cutwater, published on the blog of Melbourne writer Thuy Linh Nguyen. Cooney writes, "[it is] this refusal (conscious or not) to tow the lit journal line that makes Cutwater so much more interesting and layered. Argue with me, please, because I have thought about this a lot and believe it. Cutwater is willing to be the black sheep, and at least for this first issue, it has worked." The full review can be read at...

http://thuylinhnguyen.wordpress.com/

"It was also interesting to note this sense of internationalism in the new journal Cutwater, which made its debut this year; while its stories tended more toward the realist, they also seemed to carry a looser, more playful energy with them that one tends to associate with some of the younger generation of US writers, like Dave Eggers. I by no means want to suggest that there is some kind of culturally awed copying taking place, but rather that Australian journals seem to be doing their own thing, while engaging in a global conversation." From editor Delia Falconer's intoduction.

Cutwater cover illustrator Leigh Rigozzi (he of the scissor-weilding zombie mummies and loose wind-strewn papers) is looking for submissions for a brand new comics anthology (think Kramers' Ergot), titled Blood and Thunder. Submissions must be narrative based. The deadline is January 1, 2010, and you can submit either by sending a CD or hard copy to:

Leigh c/o Blood and Thunder
302 Cleveland Street
Surry Hills 2010
or emailing files to leigh@bloodandthunder.com.au

Cutwater was successfully launched in July 2009; with readings by contributors Clinton Caward, Ramon Glazov, Astrid Lorange, Derek Motion and Mark Rossiter. Big thanks to the folks at Serial Space, Georgia Blackie for taking photos, Michelle Vandermeer for manning the merchandise and everyone who came along.