The Lifted Brow


The Lifted Brow is both the name of an Australian not-for-profit literary organisation, and the quarterly print literary magazine/journal it publishes. It also posts original work on its website, stages events, runs writing contests, and more. It publishes its books through its Brow Books imprint. Originating in Brisbane, the headquarters was established in Melbourne.

History

TLB was established in 2007 by Ronnie Scott, and run since early 2012 by Sam Cooney. It is a not-for-profit literary organisation, which also runs the book publishing imprint Brow Books. It has been funded in part by Arts Victoria and the Australia Council. The organisation is run by volunteers.
In April 2020 The Lifted Brow announced a pause in operations following an investigation by the board into sexual misconduct and unprofessional conduct by a TLB worker.

''The Lifted Brow''

The Lifted Brow is an Australian quarterly print literary magazine/journal. There is also a digital version available.

History and profile

The Lifted Brow was established in 2007 by Ronnie Scott and edited by him until 2012. In 2012 Sam Cooney took as editor until 2014 when he handed over editorial duties to Ellena Savage, Stephanie Van Schilt and Gillian Terzis who edited the publication for a couple of years, before Annabel Brady-Brown and Zoe Dzunko took over in 2016. The magazine is currently edited by Justin Wolfers and Jini Maxwell.
Loosely falling under the literary journal category, the magazine features longform non-fiction and fiction, flash fiction, commentary, criticism, poetry, as well as artwork, drawings, comics, and music. Early versions of the publication were a perfect-bound journal format, and then in its middle years it embraced the tabloid newsprint format, before in 2015 evolving to the high-quality matte magazine format that is currently published four times annually. For a few years editions of The Lifted Brow included an arts and cultural lift-out called 'Middlebrow', which featured film, book, and television reviews, and articles profiling new video games, theatre, and music. Some editions have been themed; themes have included "Food", "Music", "Capitalism", "Medicine", "Art", and "Perth". The upcoming theme for December 2019 is "Digital Intimacies".
In 2013 TLB published its first anthology: The Best of The Lifted Brow: Volume One. Edited by Ronnie Scott and celebrating the first five years of the magazine. It featured Jim Shepard, Karen Russell, Daniel Handler, Lisa Brown, Heidi Julavits, Adam Levin, Karen Coin, Rick Moody, Robert Shearman, n a bourke, Glen David Gold, Blake Butler, Michaela McGuire, Liam Pieper, Romy Ash, Luke Ryan, Tao Lin, Benjamin Law, Benjamin Kunkel, Christos Tsiolkas, Tom Cho, Alice Pung, and Elspeth Muir. The second volume of The Best of The Lifted Brow was published in November 2017.
In late 2014, The Lifted Brow begun running its now-annual Prize for Experimental Non-fiction, which went to Oscar Schwartz for his piece 'Humans Pretending to be Computers Pretending to be Humans'. The 2016 prize judges are Helen Macdonald, Kate Zambreno, Dodie Bellamy and Maria Tumarkin and declared W.J.P. Newnham's piece 'Trashman Loves Maree' the winner. In 2017 the judges are Eileen Myles, Wayne Koestenbaum, Leslie Jamison, Fiona Wright and Claudia La Rocco.
In 2015, The Lifted Brow won the inaugural 'Best Original Non-fiction' prize, judged by Shazna Nessa and Lynn Barber, at the Stack Magazines awards, beating out over 170 other titles.
Contributors who have appeared in the magazine include Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, Wayne Koestenbaum, Helen Garner, Anne Boyer, Douglas Coupland, Roxane Gay, Heidi Julavits, Tom Bissell, Eileen Myles, Margo Lanagan, Tracy K. Smith, Diane Williams, Sam Lipsyte, Sheila Heti, and others.
As of September 2019 there have been 43 issues of The Lifted Brow published.

Brow Books

In 2015, The Lifted Brow announced that it was expanding into book publishing. Brow Books was created in 2016 to publish the authors and books that established publishing houses were largely ignoring due to perceived lack of commercial viability.
In 2018, the Brow put out a call soliciting manuscripts translated by Australians. "If you are translating a work from a language that is underrepresented, we want to hear from you." The Brow also entered into a co-publishing agreement with Tilted Axis, a nonprofit dedicated to publishing contemporary Asian literature. The agreement gives Brow right of first refusal in Australia and New Zealand for Tilted Axis titles.
Published works
2016
2017
2018
2019
  • Comic artist Mandy Ord's When One Person Dies The Whole World is Over.
  • This Young Monster by Charlie Fox.
  • Bright by Duanwad Pimwana, the first English language novel by a Thai woman to appear outside of Thailand. The text was translated by Mui Poopoksakul.
Forthcoming works'
To be published in 2020
To be published in 2021
To be published in 2021/22