'Go west young man' has been a siren call in Australia, Canada and the US for centuries - a new frontier for them, yet already home to others for millennia. In Australia, the lure of bounty from mineral riches drew generations of fortune hunters to its western third. For some this was a stop on the road to a better place, for many a destination for new beginnings, while for those who had always lived there dislocation was inevitable. Since the 1980s Perth has become a byword for new wealth and in the first years of the 21st Century became a boom-town the likes of which Australia hasn't seen since the 1850s. There is evidence this is starting to slow, but what will be left when the boom deflates? WA is also Australia's (and perhaps the world's) largest state, most of which is a vast desert butting hard against a broiling ocean. The view, looking back east, is sceptical, looking west uncertain, with a lot of space between both. This edition of the award-winning quarterly Griffith REVIEW will see submissions from Tim Winton to Carmen Lawrence reflecting on the unique place and perspective that is Western Australia. With the escalating pace of change in the west it is time to reappraise what makes Western Australia distinctive and how its future might unfold.