Portside Review unveils Issue 16
September 24, 2025
Centre for Stories is pleased to share that the sixteenth edition of Portside Review is out now! Featuring 11 essays exploring a vast range of human rights issues, they are the seeds and saplings, even the forests, of peace within the Indian Ocean.
Winning essay ‘The Blind Side’ by Sabia Rasool is published with runner-up Rachel Desiree Felix’s essay ‘Daughters of Silence’. Alongside these two excellent essays are 9 other shortlisted essays:
Alifya Maheswari – ‘The Future Won’t Be Lonely’
Amritha Mohan – ‘Swimming Away from Marriage and Other Arrangements’
Ashna Hedge – ‘Six Women – Decolonising Reproductive Healthcare in Australia and Beyond’
Chibueze Darlington Anuonye – ‘Go Tell It to White People’
Clare Brown – ‘No Pride in Humanitarianism’
Patrick Hannan – ‘The Circumstances in Which They Come’
Scherezade Siobhan – ‘The Invisible Subject’
Yoga Prasetyo – ‘Migration and the Traps of Legality’
Susan Francis – ‘No End in Wandering Mazes’
In his editorial, Robert Wood stated:
“And yet, writing, like other art forms, is a way to build peace. It is a way to call forward what is in our hearts and heads—maybe even souls. Writing and reading, just like music and dance and all forms of expression, empower us to imagine a better society. They offer us a vision of what we might become when the war horses fertilise the fields instead of being sent into battle. That is the joy that comes when we see peace as the highway we walk on together, broad and fair, not a byway trodden only by the few.”
Read the full editorial here.
We would like to thanks our judges Kirsten Han, Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes, and John Ryan for their care, time, and contribution to this edition. As well as Centre for Stories’ Founder’s Circle and Centre for Stories’ esteemed donors Baden Offord, Christopher MacFarlane and John Ryan who funded the Human Rights Essay Prize.
Read all essays within this issue for free at Portside Review.
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