In January, we welcomed in the Gregorian calendar new year, looking back on 2015, the year that was. As we start the succession of lunar new year celebrations, be they Chinese, Korean, Mongolian, Tibetan or Vietnamese, it seems fitting to celebrate the year to come. So we’ve cleaned our house, and we’re throwing up the decorations, preparing for a year that we hope will involve stories that move and challenge us; exciting new collaborations; and opportunities to connect with our readers and communities.
As you can see, we’ve spruced our website, with a fresh new logo and interface, which we hope will put the stories up front and centre and provide a space where we can comment, connect and interrogate the ideas contained within.
Thanks must go firstly to Arsenio Reyes, a Brisbane-based graphic designer who followed in Quan Yeoman’s fly footsteps for Yum Chattier and then used his expertise to keep the feeling of our original Hokusai-inspired logo, with a little extra 2016 pizazz. We’ve been delightedly testing and trialling this little gem with our Facebook and Twitter for a while now, but we’re excited to see it up where it belongs!
From there, Kristine Kenins, photographer (and hard-working graphic design intern) put together our new website design, taking on board our champagne tastes and beer bottle budgets. Originally from Latvia, Kristine moved to Australia as a young person and it was a delight to share her insights into her experiences of hyphenated-Australian-ness, while working to achieve our new site. Recently returned from travels in India, we are excited to have more work from Kristine in the coming weeks.
Finally, Mik Efford, our ever-dedicated web designer, made all the dreams a reality. With patience and pragmatism, Mik has been working to support Peril for several years now and we love his ability to keep things simple, make things better and work with a team that sometimes wants “that thing on the side thingy to go different, you know, better, like bigger?”
To celebrate our new clothes, soon we’ll be sharing an exciting interview with our regular collaborators and all round incredible types, RMIT’s WrICE Program. WrICE recently announced their Established Writer and Early Career Writer Fellowships for multi-award winning writer Alice Pung (Unpolished Gem, Her Father’s Daughter, Laurinda) and Michele Lee, Asian-Australian playwright and author whose memoir Banana Girl was published in 2013.
The Fellows will join a face-to-face community of writers in a collaborative immersion residency in Guangzhou and Yangshou, China, in April 2016 and a reciprocal residency later this year in Melbourne, in association with the Melbourne Writers Festival and Footscray Community Arts Centre.
We hope you’ll take the time to explore the site a little, perhaps uncovering some hiddens yourselves. There are always bound to be gremlins that crawl into the works during any web redecoration, so if you find something that seems to be amiss, just drop us a line and we’ll get right on it.
And if you like what you see, and you’d like to be a part of Peril, as a writer, an editor, volunteer or supporter, then we’re always open to hearing from you too!