MILK Reads
Edition #1


Curated by Christine McFetirdge


From the open eyes of the author who writes the letters on the page to the open eyes of the reader who reads them.
— Jenny Erpenbeck 
 

The Métis artist and scientist Max Liboiron recognises reading and writing as relations in their book Pollution is Colonialism. To read ethically, they write, we must refuse ‘to read as a form of extraction.’ In this way, reading becomes a means of thinking through and understanding what our relations and obligations to human and non-human others might be. To read in an extractive way, on the other hand, treats it as an experience that must be useful or relatable. Reading against extraction, then, is generous and generative. 

 

• Introduction: Pollution is Colonialism by Max Liboiron (Duke University Press).
   

• Snugglepot and Cuddlepie in the Ghost Gum by Evelyn Araluen (Sydney Review of Books).
   

• Negative Reviews, Positive Vibes and Being a Forever Reader by Declan Fry (Kill Your Darlings).
   

• Perec’s Cat by Vanessa Berry (Sydney Review of Books). Further reading: The Writer’s Clutter by Vanessa Berry (Sydney Review of Books).
   

• Chapter III by Cecilia Sordi Campos (self-published).
   

• Wildness: Feminism, identity, and the willingness to be defeated by Maria Tumarkin (The Yale Review).
   

• Co- Issue Two: WATER, edited by Christine McFetridge and Josephine Mead (Co- Publishing).
  
   

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Christine McFetridge is a settler New Zealander based on unceded Wadawurrung Country. She is a photographer, researcher and writer represented by M.33, Melbourne, and a founding member of Co- Publishing and Women in Photography NZ & AU. Christine is a PhD candidate in RMIT University's School of Art and a member of the AEGIS Art & Ecologies Research Network.