This special issue of TEXT seeks to investigate peripheral visions of past, present and future;of figures and forms, fractures and erasures. Inspired by the AAWP’s 2018 annual conference held in Perth, Western Australia, we invited writers and scholars to think deeply and broadly about the purpose and potential of writing of all kinds. Authors were encouraged to tackle, for example, unconventional wisdom, unsettled perspectives, lapsed borders—that which is beyond and outside the accepted or obvious. By this means, we hoped that various worlds, ideas, fictions and verities would emerge, compete, coalesce, fragment and challenge.
During a period of elevated consciousness, when countless voices vie for attention, we believe there is a need for vibrant and rigorous scrutiny of writing’s potential to interrupt, corrupt and disrupt, as well as to rouse, revivify and heal—in other words, for writing that explores and encourages various forms of peripheral vision.