Table of contents for HEAT Series 3 Number 16 in HEAT

WHEN RELAUNCHING HEAT three years ago, we imagined a smaller, more intimate publication than the normal literary quarterly – a magazine that we hoped would travel lightly and defy distraction – without knowing quite how that conception might evolve. Many of you have since told me that you read each issue cover to cover – a sign that something of that original intention has been realised. Writing now, with our sixteenth issue, I am proud that the magazine is re-established as a firm feature of Australian literary life; as a publication with a sense of history and a drive for discovery, a place where style, curiosity and depth of thought are prized. My intention has always been to publish a magazine with a feeling of completeness in its overall selection…

Nicholas Jose has published three collections of short fiction, a memoir and eight novels, including The Idealist, which was shortlisted for the 2024 Age Book of the Year. He was Cultural Counsellor at the Australian Embassy in Beijing from 1987 to 1990, and has taught at Adelaide, Australian National and Western Sydney Universities along with Bath Spa University, Beijing Foreign Studies, Harvard, Oxford and UNSAM Buenos Aires. He lives on unceded Kaurna land in Adelaide, South Australia, where he walks in the parklands most days. THE FIRST WORD I REMEMBER being captivated by is ‘monotonous’. It must have been in primary school, when I was ten or eleven. I was drawn to the long, strange word. I liked the look of it, the repeated ohs and their symmetry on either…

Tom Cho is the author of the collection of fictions Look Who’s Morphing, originally published by Giramondo. His current project is a novel that philosophises about religion. Originally from Naarm (‘Melbourne’), he now lives in St John’s, Ktaqmkuk (‘Newfoundland’). His website is at tomcho.com This story was written in response to Owen Leong’s forthcoming solo exhibition Bitten Peach 分桃, opening this November at the Institute for Australian and Chinese Arts and Culture at Western Sydney University. IN A VILLAGE IN WHAT IS NOW KNOWN AS TOISAN, there was a young scholar who was always reading and writing one thing or another. He read poetry and political thought from the Confucian canon, and he wrote essays and stories. On most evenings, he preferred to be in the world of his studio…

Alexis Wright is a member of the Waanyi nation of the southern highlands of the Gulf of Carpentaria. The author of the novels Capentaria, The Swan Book and Praiseworthy, Wright has published three works of non-fiction: Take Power, Grog War, and Tracker. In 2024, Praiseworthy was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award, and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the University of Queensland Fiction Book Award, the ALS Gold Medal, the Stella Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award. 1 Stories do not rise up out of the ashes left from the dead. A deep consciousness working behind the creative process acknowledges the sheer scale of brokenness in the world. What world am I talking about? What scale? The world spins its own vibrancy, and the infinite strength of…

Edina Szvoren (1974) is an EU Prize for Literature-winning prose writer living in Budapest, Hungary. Since 2010 she has published six short fiction collections. Sentences on Wonderment, from which this piece is drawn, is her fifth. Hungarian critics consider her writing to be among the most important publications in Hungary in recent decades, and her volumes have been translated into several languages, including English, Italian and Dutch. Erika Mihálycsa teaches modern and contemporary English literature at Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania. She is the author of the monograph ‘A wretchedness to defend’: Reading Beckett’s Letters, co-editor of Retranslating Joyce for the 21st Century and editor of Rareș Moldovan’s new, annotated Romanian translation of Joyce’s Ulysses. She has translated Samuel Beckett, Flann O’Brien, Patrick McCabe and others into Hungarian and a handful…

Fiction 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 Shaun Prescott The Town Jon Fosse Septology (trans. Damion Searls) Non-fiction Nikos Papastergiadis John Berger and Me Bonny Cassidy Monument Imants Tillers Credo Poetry 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 π.O. The Tour Luke Beesley In the Photograph Grace Yee Chinese Fish Autumn Royal The Drama Student Lucy Dougan Monster Field For more information visit giramondopublishing.com.…

Wen-Juenn Lee writes poetry on unceded Wurundjeri land. In her writing, she is interested in gaps, leaks and spillage. Her work has been published in Meanjin, Cordite and Going Down Swinging among others She is working on her debut poetry collection. on top of a hill My parents live on top of a hillthis is how I learnt to read light.I thought all houses required thissuperhuman scalingto return homea burning calf, a will to eatto leaveleft you descendinglike Godwatching cars wreck pastblind spotsbirds wavering on telephone wiresafter schoolmy mother crossed the road with me.She’d wait at the bottom of the hilla lonely womanwaitfiveten minuteswatch the cars hurry pastfor a Mercedes to pausewave a lazy handcross nowby high schoolI crossed alonebut I still imaginedmy body splayed on gravelonce, we heard a…

Chris Ames is a writer from California. His work has appeared in The Big Issue, The Saturday Paper, New Australian Fiction and elsewhere. A 2024 Hot Desk Fellow at The Wheeler Centre, he lives in Melbourne with his wife and son. I’M BUILDING A HOUSE BIG ENOUGH FOR MY FAMILY and also everyone named Chris to live in. When it’s finished, there will be three levels. My wife and I will live on the ground floor. Our children, a boy and a girl, above. And below, in a series of interconnected, sunken basements, the Chrises. I remember as a child learning to write the plural possessive of my name, how wrong it looked, how unfinished, the apostrophe hanging there alone like a piece of debris in the outer orbit of…

And receive each issue of HEAT Australia’s international literary magazine 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 every two months, 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. Submission Guidelines HEAT welcomes submissions of fiction, essays, poetry and translated works throughout the year. We encourage writing which gives full rein to the author’s voice, without the restriction of a word limit. In the case of poetry, we seek longer…