In these strange times-the era of President Donald Trump and the constant contest between truth and political expedience-what is the responsibility of the intellectual, of the thinker? To sit on their hands? Or speak out and risk controversy and rebuke?

Renowned philosopher and public intellectual Raimond Gaita wrestles with this big issue in the spring edition of Meanjin and the result is a major essay, 'Truth In The Time Of Trump'.

In the same edition Katharine Murphy considers the trend toward public disengagement with politics while Guy Rundle fills notebook after notebook as France and Britain go to the polls.

Elsewhere, Anson Cameron celebrates the last days of Melbourne's somewhat notorious Gatwick Hotel; Scott Stephens charts the socially and morally destructive rise of inequality; Robyn Annear fears for a future with nothing but digital records; Eleanor Robertson ponders the many meanings of 'intersectionality'; Elle Hardy reports on urban America's war with prescription painkillers; Damon Young confronts The Punisher's numb rage; Steve Dow surveys the parlous state of local TV production, and from the Meanjin vaults, Miles Franklin considers the work of Henry Lawson.

There's new fiction from Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Liana Skrzypczak, Paul Shields and Anthony Lynch, and a brace of fresh poetry and memoir.