Cirrus@Austlit

'Our new issue opens with ‘Dream Geographies’, an important essay by Alexis Wright that covers the many aspects of writing her most recent novel Praiseworthy. In her expressive, allegorical style, Wright discusses the importance of writing on a large scale in an imperilled world, the state of Aboriginal self-determination and the value in thinking off-key to conjure humour. She also describes the collection of notes (many scribbled quickly to catch the flow of thoughts) and treasured objects that helped fire her vision of the book (random gifts from a windfall: a feather from the local birds, or a perfect bird’s nest that had floated down from the highest tree in a night storm, and fallen undamaged into the garden). ' (Introduction)

'The new issue of HEAT is here! Available now, Series 3 Number 15, offers writing from Glenn Bech, Chris Fleming, Harriet Armstrong, Isabella Trimboli, Hasib Hourani and Michal Tallo.' (Editorial introduction)

'The final issue for 2023 contains work by seven writers using fragmentary forms to convey the fleeting nature of thoughts, memories and dreams. Paddy O’Reilly shares a darkly funny short story about a mid-career academic dealing with grief in the workplace: my unfinished article rearing up from its paper nest like a desperate baby bird each time I pass the desk… Jordi Infeld considers the art of dressmaking and the meanings attached to tailoring, while Bella Li and Esther Cross (trans. Alice Whitmore) conduct vivid dissections of art, literature and the body, both ancient and mythical. Nam Le and Maryam Nazarian (trans. Arash Khoshsafa) contribute poetic sequences, the first playfully ornate, the second arrestingly minimal. And Stephanie Radok rounds out the issue with ‘Inventory 2020’, a gently inquisitive journal of everyday living. On 2 April 2020 she writes: Prepare to die – what needs to be done? Pea soup, herrings, roast potatoes.' (Publication summary)

'More than other genres, biography defies methodology. So how do we read it? asks Evelyn Juers in a bravura essay that opens HEAT Series 3 Number 11. Her resolution – to interpret, digress, to walk on some biographical byways – leads first to Virginia Woolf, and on to Albert Einstein and his significant connection to a scientific expedition at Wallal in Western Australia in 1922. In a striking work of fiction, Sara Mesa (translated from the Spanish by Katie Whittemore), takes us into the mind of a young translator, alone in an oppressive small town, as she attempts to make sense of her surroundings. And poets Mona Kareem (translated from the Arabic by Sara Elkamel) and Suneeta Peres da Costa complete the issue with minimalist sequences that traverse beauty, pain, displacement, totems and food.' (Publication summary)

'Our new issue features writing by Isabella Trimboli, Ellena Savage, Harald Voetmann (trans. Johanne Sorgenfri Ottosen), Kat Capel, and Lin Bai (trans. Nicky Harman). Subscribe to HEAT now to receive Number 10 as your first issue, with more adventurous literary writing and art from Australia and around the world to come.' (Publication summary)

'The sun came out, momentarily, everything brighter, then the clouds came over and rain came down, sifting through the air. Looking over the city, a white curtain. – Antigone Kefala

'This month’s HEAT offers revelations about the nature of intimacy and mortality. In her first fiction publication, writer and director Alena Lodkina shares two short stories that depict the knotty business of female friendship. Marianne Boruch, an American poet who spent 2019 as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Canberra, has a triptych of poems about artistic practice. In elegant vignettes, Bonny Cassidy reflects on her father’s cognitive decline. Ender Başkan contributes three poems that cover parenting, family holidays, and ‘the erotics of bookselling’. And completing the issue: Antigone Kefala‘s last journals, which provide remarkable insight into the final months of one of Australia’s best (and most overlooked) writers, who died at the age of ninety-one in December last year. With her distinctive poetic sensibility, Kefala records the changing of the seasons and offers wry, exacting commentary on everything from interior design and online shopping to the mediocrity of Australian politics and media, the injustice of the war in Ukraine, and the futility of ageing.' (Publication summary)

'Strangers, sleepwalkers, chaos agents, vagrants, inventors and activists populate the first HEAT of 2023. Eda Gunaydin opens the issue with a satirical short story about misguided intentions. Gareth Morgan’s poems reveal glimpses of city life in Melbourne and on Staten Island. In two very short stories, Zhu Yue plays tricks with literary occidentalism. Pi.O. shares a sequence of poems that explore love, anarchy and the spirit of performance. Aleksandra Lun, who once worked in a casino, invokes the roulette wheel in an essay on literary transnationalism. Writing from Paris, Noémi Lefebvre imagines a conversation with Jacques Lacan over toast and coffee. And in closing, Andriy Lyubka sends a clear-eyed dispatch from Ukraine.' (Publication summary)

'HEAT Series 3 Number 6, in fuchsia pink, marks our first year back in print. It opens with an essay on the nature of time by Fiona Wright, followed by a meditation on childhood, grief, and freedom by Hanne Ørstavik (trans. Martin Aitken); then, a sequence of poems about bereavement by Zang Di (trans. Eleanor Goodman), insights on fatherhood by Oscar Schwartz, some surprising ceramic post-it notes by artist Kenny Pittock, and a long essay by Amitava Kumar about the ideological shifts across decades in eastern India.' (Publication summary)

'‘If I wanted stillness, I’d build a bungalow,’ writes Ella Jeffery in ‘Supertall’, a poem that envisions life in 432 Park, the world’s tallest residential building. HEAT Series 3 Number 4 explores the tensions between house and home, nature and suburbia, earth and outer space. Clare Murphy uses the language of plants to tell a thorny story of urban development. A series of photographs by Yanni Florence reveal hidden images on city streets. Irish writer David Hayden shares a filmic vision of the Sydney suburbs in his short story ‘Marrickville Light’. Two poets, Ella Skilbeck-Porter and Ella Jeffery contemplate cats and real estate. And Luke Beesley and Amy Leach go further afield, conjuring worlds that sit somewhere between the real and the imaginary.' (Publication summary)

'Our third issue of the year spans vast distances, taking readers from Canberra to Cambridge via Mexico and Manhattan. In fiction, Madeleine Watts, Kenneth Chong and Aniela Rodríquez share vivid stories of desire, withholding, and biblical revenge, while poets Iman Mersal and Jarad Bruinstroop offer perspectives on beauty and oppression. Essayist Kate Crowcroft contributes a piece that explores the history of the tongue, switching deftly between the personal and the archival. Robyn Creswell translates Mersal from Arabic, and Elizabeth Bryer translates Rodríguez from Spanish. ' (Publication summary)

'Opening HEAT Series 3 Number 2 is an essay by British novelist Helen Oyeyemi on the ‘electrical wriggle’ that characterises writing at play. New Zealand writer Pip Adam summons e-scooters to life in ‘Unlock to Ride’, and poet Samuel Wagan Watson makes a foray into prose with ‘Min-Min’, a flash of a story. A lovelorn lament set in Sydney’s Blue Mountains by Luke Carman follows; then swooping verse from Melbourne poet Michael Farrell; and, finally, fiction by new writer Ren Arcamone that blends the surreal with the everyday.' (Publication summary)

'Award-winning Sydney-based critic Mireille Juchau opens HEAT Series 3 Number 1 with a deeply reported essay that examines the aftermath of war. Melbourne writer Josephine Rowe follows with a dreamlike story about a young family in an enigmatic setting. Queenslander Sarah Holland-Batt contributes a quintet of poems that take us as far as Brazil, before a reimagining of The Decameron in the Adelaide Hills by Brian Castro. In closing, Mexican-American writer Cristina Rivera Garza shares a macabre quest that resonates long after reading.' (Publication summary)