Verity La was established in 2010 as an online, transnational creative arts journal publishing fiction, poetry, nonfiction, visual art, reviews and interviews from Australia and around the world.  

After ten years of publishing and a five-year hiatus, we’ve returned in 2025 with a new name —Verity La La — and a new vision: to live out the value of freedom of expression.
 
We believe that in recent years literary culture has lost sight of what writers are called to do — to tell the truth, to be courageous with our pens, to be independent thinkers, and to be led by our art.  
 
At Verity La La, we are solely interested in publishing compelling stories that offer insight into the human condition. We value each writer as an individual with their unique experiences and perceptions of reality. We are committed to maintaining a thriving literary community that allows for unfettered creativity and fosters an exciting exchange of ideas. And we uphold the right of our authors and editors to create and publish without fear or favour. 
Our Team

Verity La La is Co-Edited by Michele Seminara and Magan Magan. Our poetry editor is Ali Whitelock. We are an artist-run, not-for-profit organisation. Our wonderful board members are Yvette Henry-Holt, Jeanne Ryckmans, Karen Hughes and Orazio Seminara. 

Submissions 

Read our full submissions guidelines for more details. 

Do Stay in Touch

Subscribe to us via our Home page. Follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram. Dance a jig. You know you want to. If there’s something you want to tell us, something you want to share, or you just feel like saying ‘Hi there, how are you?’ then drop us a line via editor@verityla.com.

Official Info

The National Library of Australia archives Verity La La in the National Bibliographic Database as part of the PANDORA Archive, which ensures that all the material published here is safeguarded against changes in hardware and software, and that all the contributions made to this journal are protected in perpetuity. ISSN 2200-6969.

A small selection of work is also archived at Deakin Research Online, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia.

The journal is comprehensively listed on the AustLit database.

Verity La La gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Australian Council for the Arts for supporting the journal throughout 2018 and ’19, and to Create NSW for its support in 2020. 

The opinions expressed in the works published on Verity La La do not necessarily reflect those of its Editorial Team or Board, nor are they necessarily endorsed through the act of publishing. We welcome respectful and informed discussion and urge you to get in touch via editor@verityla.com to raise any questions or concerns. Our ears are always open.

Why Verity La?
Verity outside the Sydney Building in the late 1930s

Verity outside the Sydney Building in the late 1930s

It’s an abbreviation of ‘Verity Lane’, a very dodgy back-alley in Canberra, Australia’s national capital, where the journal was born. (These days we operate from a network of laptops all over the country – don’t tell ASIO.) More importantly, however, the name now given to the lane also commemorates the birth there, in 1938, of Verity Hewitt’s, Canberra’s first serious bookshop. In that pre-electronic age, this bookshop and its owner encouraged the distribution and intelligent discussion of literature in the otherwise bleak cultural environment of 1930s Canberra, perhaps comparable in some ways to the use today of online journals. From a wider perspective, Verity was a remarkable example of a mid-twentieth-century woman, independent, brave, and with a deep and creative interest in literature and people. In fact, she was such a special lady, a book has been written about Verity and some of her letters have also been published! Verity’s family has informed us that she would have been sympathetic with our aims and pleased with our work.  Hope Verity Fitzhardinge (1908-1986): we honour you; you are our patron saint.

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Michele Seminara is a poet and editor from Sydney. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Cordite, Mascara Literary Review and Australian Poetry Journal. She has written two full-length collections, Suburban Fantasy (UWA Publishing, 2021) and Engraft (Island Press, 2016), and two chapbooks, Scar to Scar (with Robbie Coburn, PressPress, 2016) and HUSH (Blank Rune Press, 2017). Michele has performed her work and appeared as a panellist and moderator at numerous literary events and festivals  across Australia. She is the Co-Managing Editor of Verity La La creative arts journal, and is currently working on her verse novella, Dis. https://micheleseminara.net/

Magan Magan is the author of poetry collection Stop All the Clocks, Co-Managing Editor of Verity La La, and the host of the Inner Self Rising Podcast and YouTube channel, a show for free thinkers focused on self-development and living authentically. 

 

Ali Whitelock is a Scottish poet and writer living out west in an old church with her French chain smoking husband. Her poems have been said to evoke the best of Bukowski and Ginsberg and are a cross between stand up comedy and a therapy session all at once. (Dr Kevin MacNeil, author, lecturer creative writing Stirling University).

Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Best of The Net and has been published in magazines and journals around the world, including twice in The Moth. She has performed her poetry at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (2018 & 2019) and has appeared at Sydney Writers Festival, Edinburgh International Book Festival, Writers at the Convent (Melbourne), The NessBookFest Highland Book Festival, Wigtown Book Festival and Addi Road Writers Festival.

She has published 3 full length collections, & my heart crumples like a coke can (Wakefield Press 2018), the lactic acid in the calves of your despair (Wakefield Press 2020, long listed for the Australian Literature Society gold medal 2021), and a brief letter to the sea about a couple of things (Wakefield Press 2023). Her memoir, Poking seaweed with a stick & running away from the smell (Wakefield Press & Polygon Edinburgh 2009) was launched at Sydney Writers Festival and published in Australia and the UK to critical acclaim.

Ali has been the judge of the Woollahra Digital Poetry Prize for Woollahra Council 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. She’s also been part of the judging panel for the Liquid Amber Poetry Prize in 2024, 2025 and upcoming in 2026. She mentors emerging and established poets and runs writing/mentoring retreats at aforementioned old church.

Her latest completed work is a series of tragicomic letters to Neil Diamond (2025) that leap between life in drizzly small town Scotland and life in the blazing American sun. If you like a side of devastation with your hilarity, they might just be for you. They’re available to read on Substack https://dearneil.substack.com/p/dear-neil

Ali is currently working on a brand new collection of poetry, which focuses on the devastating erosion of free speech, government hyper-surveillance and media (mass and social) manipulation of populations, which is actually a lot better than it sounds. https://www.aliwhitelock.com

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National Library Of Australia Certificate

Verity La La acknowledges the Aboriginal people as the Traditional owners and Custodians of the lands on which we now work and live. We pay our respects to the Ancestors and Elders who were, and continue to be, the storytellers helping us to know our Country and her people of the past and present more clearly. We are reminded of the journey that began with the Aboriginal people in this land, but that now incorporates the larger family of Torres Strait Islanders and Australian people.