Experimental Australia
For the first Stack podcast episode of 2025 I spoke with creative director Alex Stevenson and editor-in-chief Chloe Hayman about Soft Stir, the Australian magazine that provides a space for emerging artists and writers to experiment and find their voice. They published their third issue last year, but it was the first one they’d distributed outside of Australia and New Zealand, so it was the first time I’d come across this magazine that I see as expressing a distinctly Australian view of the world.
As you’ll hear, we get into lots of detail about how the magazine could be understood as expressing an Australian identity, and having spoken with them, I think the defining characteristic of Soft Stir is the way it incorporates many ideas and influences in one place. For example it works to represent First Nations people as well as non-indigenous Australians, but it also goes way beyond that, representing deep time and the ancient forces that shaped the land, as well as more familiar subject matter, like the bewildering reality of being permanently connected to the internet. It’s kind of chaotic and it’s loads of fun, so I hope you’ll enjoy this conversation with Chloe and Alex from Soft Stir.
We have lots more conversations with indepenedent magazine makers in our podcast archives, so if you haven’t explored it already, take a look in there. And if you follow us wherever you get your podcasts we’ll be able to keep on delivering new episodes to you as soon as they’re ready. We’ve got lots more lined up for the year ahead!
Pictures by Annika Kafcaloudis
