After years of silence, Verity La returns.
This is our first issue since the journal’s Managing Editor, Michele Seminara, endured a cancellation at the hands of activists. What followed was social and cultural exile. But out of exile comes clarity.
We’re resurrecting Verity La, not in spite of its history but because of it. Now, with new co-editor Magan Magan, we believe the time is right to re-launch the journal under the fresh banner of Verity La La.
The theme of this issue is ‘Iconoclast’: those who break — and break with — what must be broken. An iconoclast does not destroy for destruction’s sake. They clear the ground. They reject current ideology and dogma because it has become stagnant, coercive, hollow. They forge unique and unapologetic creative paths (and sometimes pay the price for it).
Each contributor to ‘Iconoclast’ embodies this ethos — cutting through narrative orthodoxy, dismantling cultural idols, and reminding us that creativity without courage is merely decoration.
To the readers who have waited for our return — thank you. To the writers who dared to contribute — welcome.
May ‘Iconoclast’ seed an Australian literary renaissance.
Michele Seminara & Magan Magan
Co-Editors, Verity La La
Michele Seminara is a Sydney-based poet, writer, essayist, editor, speaker and moderator. Renowned Australian poet Robert Adamson called Seminara ‘the finest poet of her generation’. Her writing has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in publications such as Australian Poetry Journal, Mascara Literary Review, Jacket2 Magazine, Cordite, The Market Herald and The Australian. She has published two full-length collections, Suburban Fantasy (2021) and Engraft (2016), as well as two chapbooks, Scar to Scar (written with Robbie Coburn, 2016) and HUSH (2017). She is co-editor of the online creative arts journal Verity La La. Find more from Michele at her website.
Magan Magan was born in Yemen in 1987. At the age of four, after living in Malta for several years, he and his family migrated to Australia. He was awarded a Hot Desk Fellowship at The Wheeler Centre and was co-editor of anthologies Growing Up African In Australia and Australian Poetry Anthology. Magan is the author of Stop All the Clocks (2024) and From Grains to Gold, and is the host of the Inner Self Rising Podcast, a show for free thinkers focused on self-development and living authentically.