Table of contents for HEAT Series 3 Number 21 in HEAT

Softness whispers early morning 2 2024 20 x 15 cm Etching with chine collé, edition 1/20 Courtesy of the artist Photo: James Evans This work is part of the series Glimmers, first shown at Australian Galleries Melbourne in late 2024. The series captures moments in time during the artist’s bushwalks to discover waterfalls on Dharawal and Gundungurra land in Australia. The alchemy of rock and cascades mark the passage of time and the inevitability of change. Transience, inevitability and loss. Turbulence, beauty and reflection.…

Ivor Indyk is director of Giramondo Publishing, and Emeritus Professor in the Writing and Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University. He was the founding editor of HEAT magazine and co-founder of The Sydney Review of Books. ‘Time and Wonder’ was delivered as the Murray Talk at the Mildura Writers Festival in July 2025. IN A SERIES CALLED ‘THE MURRAY TALK’, set in Mildura, it is fitting that I begin with a tribute to Les Murray, who was until his passing the presiding deity of this festival, and is likely still present in this capacity in your memories as he is in mine, down early to breakfast and still there after most of the guests had gone, a Buddha-like figure, eager for conversation and fellowship. My own more personal memory…

Hon Lai Chu is one of Hong Kong’s most prominent writers and the author of Mending Bodies. She has received accolades from Taiwan’s Unitas Literary Association, the Liang Shiu-chiu Literature Award, the Dream of the Red Chamber Award and the Hong Kong Biennial Awards for Chinese Literature. ‘Scrap’ is translated from her short story collection A Dictionary of Two Cities, co-authored with Dorothy Tse, which won the Hong Kong Book Prize. Jacqueline Leung is a writer and translator from Hong Kong. She is translation editor for The Offing and Cicada. Her translation of Hon Lai Chu’s novel Mending Bodies is a winner of PEN Presents by the English PEN. Her work has been recognised by the Asian Cultural Council, Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference and the British Centre for Literary Translation.…

And receive each issue of HEAT Australia’s international literary magazine direct to your letterbox. Since its inception in 1996, HEAT has been renowned for a dedication to quality and a commitment to publishing innovative and imaginative poetry, fiction, essays and hybrid forms. Now, in the third series, we bring together a selection of the most interesting and adventurous Australian and overseas writers. HEAT is posted to subscribers five times a year, forming a unique, cohesive whole. Your subscription supports independent literary publishing, and enables us to cultivate and champion new writing. Visit giramondopublishing.com/heat/to subscribe.…

Peter Stamm (b. 1963), studied English literature, psychology and psychopathology before taking up a career as a freelance writer and journalist. He has lived in Paris, New York and Berlin and lives now with his family in Winterthur, Switzerland. So far, he has published nine novels, six collections of stories, seven children’s books and several radio and stage plays. His books have been translated into forty-one languages. Michael Hofmann is a poet and translator. His most recent books are One Lark, One Horse (poems) and Messing About in Boats (essays). His translation of Jenny Erpenbeck’s novel Kairos won the 2024 International Booker Prize. He teaches at the University of Florida. He has translated Peter Stamm since 2000. apples, potatos, pumpkins. I was just returning from lunch with a client, when…

Elizabeth Harrower wrote the novels Down in the City (1957), The Long Prospect (1958), The Catherine Wheel (1960) and The Watch Tower (1966). No further novels were published until May 2014 when Harrower’s ‘lost’ novel, In Certain Circles, was released. This was followed by her collected short stories, A Few Days in the Country, in 2015. She died in Sydney in 2020. Susan Wyndham is a journalist and writer who interviewed and spoke with Elizabeth Harrower many times. She is the co-editor, with Brigitta Olubas, of Hazzard and Harrower: The Letters, author of Life in His Hands: The True Story of a Neurosurgeon and a Pianist, and editor of My Mother, My Father: On Losing a Parent. Her biography of Harrower, Elizabeth Harrower: The Woman in the Watch Tower, is…

Catherine Kaixin Yu grew up in Shanghai and studies English and Education at the University of Hong Kong, with a recent semester on exchange at the University of Melbourne. This essay marks her first appearance in print. Homecoming AT THE VILLAGE ENTRANCE, THERE USED TO BE two tall poplar trees – so wide it would take two people to wrap their arms around one trunk. The bark was cracked, its rugged texture like the calloused palms of a lifelong farmer. Grandma says their roots once reached the underground river, drawing up living water, and their green leaves shone so brightly that photographers from the county’s cultural centre came to take pictures. But a few years ago, one tree was cut down to widen the road. All that remains is a…

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.…

Alex Wong is the author of two collections of poetry, Poems Without Irony (2016) and Shadow and Refrain (2021). Both are published by Carcanet in the UK, for whom he has also edited selections from Swinburne, Walter Pater and Alice Meynell. He grew up between London and Hawai‘i, has taught English literature for a dozen years at the University of Cambridge, and now lives again in London. Beds and Windows The house was a timber construction, and the windowsWanting blinds and curtains, I remember.Vents without glass, but only a mesh for mosquitoes;Wooden slats you could never properly close. More than one bed comes back to me. The biggerWas dressed all wrong with cloth from chilly England,Flower-figured heavily all over.Thick. It was tacky on restless skin; redundant. Those sheets in the…

Amy Crutchfield is a poet. Her work has been published in Australia, the UK and Ireland. Her first collection, The Cyprian, was published in 2023 and received the Prime Minister’s Literary Award in 2024. Nausicaa 1. Dawn Tender as this tiny Turkish geckodawn mollifies the fierceness of July.Firecat crouches stillthough he will chase us into our caves by midday. Sky and sea mingle and coextendas the germinating half-second whenwe recognise our complementand Albania’s blue hills recede like fascinations, eachone paler than the last.A circle of limestone chunksaround the olive’s trunk form an orchestra of sorts.Inside it an incessant chorusrecords summer’s first victim:the death of all ambition. 2. Palaiokastritsa One road in and oneroad out, on which the villages are strunglike beads, we thread througheach pale plateiato reach Palaiokastritsawith its cases…

Fiction Lee Lai Cannon Raaza Jamshed What Kept You? Antigone Kefala Fiction Michael Farrell The Victoria Principle Beverley Farmer The Seal Woman Brian Castro Chinese Postman Xi Xi Mourning a Breast (trans. Jennifer Feeley) Beverley Farmer Alone Anne de Marcken It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over Jonathan Buckley Tell Max Easton Paradise Estate Nicholas Jose The Idealist Pip Adam Audition Sanya Rushdi Hospital Alexis Wright Praiseworthy Non-fiction Nikos Papastergiadis John Berger and Me Bonny Cassidy Monument Imants Tillers Credo Poetry Keri Glastonbury 51 Alterities Grace Yee Joss Antigone Kefala Poetry Šime Knežević In Your Dreams Suneeta Peres da Costa The Prodigal Hasib Hourani rock flight Judith Beveridge Tintinnabulum Kate Fagan Song in the Grass Manisha Anjali Naag Mountain Kate Middleton Television Amy Crutchfield The Cyprian Louise Carter Golden Repair…