What better way to pay tribute to The Liar’s 40th anniversary than with the Memory issue?  

Our past clings to us. The distortions, the harrowing truths, the lies we tell ourselves. Are we capable of forming a perfect image of the past, or are they just echoes? 

Think of memory as nostalgia and commemoration. As the history that lives in your body. It can bowl you over like a tide, or drip into your subconscious late at night. Memory can be an obsession. A familiar smell, the taste of fruit, the beat of a song, the touch of sand.  

What holds onto memory for you when life gets in the way – a place, a keepsake, a person? Where do you go to return to them? How do you get there? 

Who do you wish you could forget? And who do you remember, nevertheless? Wonder: what is real, and what’s a mirage? Think about how these fragments create you, confuse you, challenge you, and coalesce into the world around you. What begs to be forgotten, preserved, rewritten? 

Ask yourself what the land remembers. What stories it tells. What you’ve inherited. How do we listen to and honour memory in a colonial legacy?  

We invite you to submit your original work – short stories, prose, poetry, creative non-fiction, visual art – and share what memory means to you. Convince of us your uncertainty. Your moments of making.  

To celebrate 40 years of The Liar, tell us:  

What do you remember?