Table of contents for HEAT Series 3 Number 13 in HEAT

James Salvius Cheng was born in Myanmar, though he lives and writes in Western Australia. When not writing he works as a doctor. His poetry and fiction has been published in Westerly, Mascara Literary Review and Meniscus. LAST YEAR I FINALLY HAD THE TIME to put together a vegetable patch in the backyard. It is nothing fancy but it is my pride and joy. I have planted potatoes and carrots, twining vines of tomatoes and a herb garden which is always going to seed despite my best efforts. Today is the first harvest of the season. I begin with the carrots, Daucus carota, grown together in the little families formed by my scattering of their seed. Their woody taproot is sweet and crisp and formed of a pulpy cortex and…

Beverley Farmer (1941–2018) was the author of four collections of short stories, including This Water: Five Tales, which was longlisted for the 2018 Stella Prize; the writer’s notebook, A Body of Water; The Bone House, a collection of essays; and the novels The Seal Woman, The House in the Light, shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, and Alone, which will be published by Giramondo in a new edition in May. These poems are taken from a newly discovered collection of seasonal haiku. Some at blood heat, somecold, the pools have faint waves ofsand, shadow and light. This constant drippingon the sand sounds like footstepsnever coming close. Now is slack water,dead water, between two tides,two lives of the sea. Clouds in the green waveloom, chrome yellow, sand, out ofnowhere, a…

Marianne Larsen is one of Denmark’s best yet most overlooked poets. She has written over fifty works of prose and poetry and was recently awarded the Danish Academy’s most prestigious award, Den Store Pris. Her latest collection, The Morning I Happened Not to Be an Insect in September, in which an ageing poet recalls glimpses of childhood, was published on her seventieth birthday to great critical acclaim and earned both the Critics’ Choice Award and Politiken’s Frit Flet Prize. Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell are translators living in Copenhagen. They have translated fiction and poetry by Danish writers such as Tove Ditlevsen, Olga Ravn and Marianne Larsen. Their translations have appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, Asymptote, EuropeNow, Poetry International, and on stage. First Zone Why am I light-catchingly…

We respectfully acknowledge the Gadigal, Burramattagal and Cammeraygal peoples, the traditional owners of the lands where Giramondo’s offices are located. We extend our respects to their ancestors and to all First Nations peoples and Elders. The Giramondo Publishing Company is grateful for the support of Western Sydney University in the implementation of its book publishing program. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body. This project is supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.…

Anna Poletti is a writer and researcher based in the Netherlands. They are the author of Stories of the Self: Life Writing After the Book, and co-editor of the Eisner Awardnominated collection Graphic Medicine (with Erin La Cour). This story is drawn from her forthcoming novel, Hello, World?, to be published by Semiotext(e) in November 2024. HELLO DEAR S, i write because of the exceptionallyhigh matching score. nice to know thatI’m not alone. :)L. It is autumn when László sends his introductory message on the dating app. Seasonal is gripping on to their job while their life falls apart in a foreign country. They are not sure that talking to the world in this state is a good idea, but they don’t know what else to do while they are…

Michael Farrell is the author of nine books of poetry, including open sesame, which was shortlisted for the 2011 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry, as was I Love Poetry in 2018, which won the Queensland Literary Award for Poetry that same year. Googlecholia, his most recent book, was longlisted for the 2023 ALS Gold Medal. ‘DEAR VAL,’ RAN THE EMAIL, ‘we would like to invite you to edit a special fiction issue of Desert Rat, on a topic of your choosing (see our website for thematic parameters, but I’m sure anything you come up with will be fine).’ There followed further details regarding timing, the number of suitable stories required, and an editing fee: a more generous one than usual, due to a specific grant. The email…