What is the underlying ethos behind this magazine?
The main thrust of what we aim to do is contained in the journal’s name: ‘Verity’ means ‘truth’ and first and foremost we want to give our authors a place to tell the truth, without fear or favour. No-one needs to adhere to a particular ideological approach or party line.
This ethos is informed by our previous experience of being ‘cancelled’ in 2020. We believe that artists must be free to express their views. Of course, no-one is required to agree with those views, but if a piece is well written and thought-provoking, we’ll publish it as a way of broadening discourse and opening dialogue.
verityla.com/
Now, if readers don’t like something we publish and contact us to demand that we take it down, we’ll of course consider their views and perhaps even publish their counter arguments, but we will not remove or censor an author’s work as we did in 2020. We are no longer cancellable because everyone working with the journal now strongly believes in freedom of creative expression and we are not financially answerable to anyone. That is a strong position to be in.
There are unfortunately plenty of journals in Australia publishing a homogenous set of views and limited array of writers. We believe there needs to be a wider range of ideas and work on offer for people to consider, and that’s the space Verity La La will occupy within the literary arts in Australia.
But you are an online magazine so you won’t just be viewed by Australian readers?
While many of our authors and readers do come from within Australia, we also feel strongly about engaging with international writers and building a world-wide readership. We want to look outwards, not only inwards, since the world is now such a connected place.
What about commissioning material?
For our most recent Issue of the magazine, Iconoclast, my co-editor and I worked behind the scenes to source work by reaching out to our contacts in the publishing world. I sent emails outlining what had happened to me in 2020 and how we were planning to make a comeback, and almost everyone was very supportive.
We managed to gather a lot of impressive work without having to open for submissions, and we’re therefore able to return to publishing without forewarning. That was a deliberate decision designed to ensure we made a strong comeback without being hindered by our old detractors. But in the future, we’ll source work through a combination of commissions and open submissions.
verityla.com/2025/05/13/editors-note-verity-la-reborn-issue-one-iconoclast/
What about the look of the online pages. How did that come about?
We were very lucky to have one of our board members, Karen Hughes, design our original website several years ago. When we decided to re-launch this year, she generously offered to refresh the site and gave it a more modern look. I think she’s done an incredible job!
What about paying for the website and hosting all the material?
Well Verity La (Verity La La’s predecessor) began publishing in 2010, so together, the journals house a massive amount of archived material. It would normally be financially prohibitive to keep such a site online, but we’ve been extremely fortunate to have the help of an arts lover who works in cyber security manage the site on our behalf since 2019.
This was vital to us being able to stay online, especially in the last few years when the journal was on hiatus and wasn’t generating an income. In Australia, there’s an issue around archiving online magazines that contain culturally significant material — because it costs to keep a website up, important works are in danger of being lost when publishers shut down their journals. At Verity La La, we’ve been lucky thus far not to have to worry about that. It really does take a village and a lot of generosity and kindness from the arts community to keep going!
verityla.com/2025/05/12/desolation-songs-robbie-coburn/
Where to now?
That’s something I’m still pondering. I’m taking things quite slowly, because when I took over as managing editor of the original Verity La in 2014, I rushed in excitedly, and while the journal was successful until it was cancelled, in retrospect, I don’t think I built a stable enough foundation for it to grow. I also don’t think I was discerning enough regarding who I took in to work on the journal. And these two factors contributed to our downfall.
I now want to work with writers and editors who are in alignment with the more heterodox approach we’re taking. I also want to maintain my energy levels and not give quite so much of myself and my work away!
In the short term, we aim to publish a new edition of the journal later in the year, and if that goes well, and the support is there, we’ll see what else we can achieve in 2026.
Onwards!
