‘The book has the effect of mobilising one’s own store of knowledge, of ‘summoning’ it. This is a facet of all reading experiences maybe. But it is remarkable that it might be more legitimately ‘a fact’ about Chinese Postman than about other novels: Chinese Postman will be very different for different people.’

‘In both jazz and writing, you can hear previous melodies inside your DNA, the future coming out of the past, then you re-work it, going up and down the spiral staircase until you grow dizzy. You become a copy of yourself and you remake yourself every day. As someone once said, existence is plagiarism.’

‘Wright has gifted her readers a total life-world, a fantastical imaginary that challenges western knowledge, logic and expectations, enriches Australian literature, and gives sovereignty to Indigenous voices.’

‘Alexis [Wright] embodies an order of excellence and influence that is transformational for her readers, First Nations or otherwise.’

‘HEAT is a visionary magazine conceived in anger and pursued with integrity. The wealth of talent and skill, the variety and challenge of the writing that has been published within its pages across the three series has so often reinvigorated my belief in what it is possible for a literary magazine – Australian and international – to be.’

‘Reeds stuck to her unwashed hair / and her cheek was bruised from sleeping / on the long string of tulasī beads she’d / bought at a temple stall in Tiruchirappalli. / Unbeknown to her they would tattoo / her skin in the night, writing their faint, / inscrutable calligraphy.’

‘At every stage of his career, π.O. has defied literary norms, forging a distinctive, idiosyncratic and profound contribution to Australian literature, expanding its boundaries and possibilities for all who follow him.’

‘A work of quietly detonative imagination… Haunting, poignant, and surprisingly funny, Anne de Marcken’s book is a tightly written tour de force about what it is to be human.’

‘The poems, invoking gods and goddesses, stigmata and samskāra, simultaneously conjure the mystical and the mundane world: skins, scars and tattoos; frogspawn and spiderwebs; sand-lines, battlelines and fissures; wombs, soil, hair and vines…’

‘My father was a great letter-writer. He wrote letters to the editors of newspapers, to lovers, to business clients, to President Jimmy Carter. Some of them replied. Some replied through their offices or agencies. He became a collector of stamps and of women; all in the most epistolary fashion; all stylishly-blamelessly and in longhand.’

‘That lone walker, yes, that stooping figure over there, that bitter and twisted man who only straightens up to look at treetops and sees nothing but fragments – ruins are his best friends. He sees only broken columns lying horizontally in the grass, symbols of fallen ambition. He does not know many people now, or only by sight.’

‘Crutchfield’s lines are almost aphoristic in their concision yet see through to worlds magnitudes larger, and her voice arrives fully-fledged, and entirely in command.’

The prize is awarded to ‘a Victorian author whose body of published work has made an outstanding contribution to Australian literature and to cultural and intellectual life.’

Expressions of interest for the position of HEAT editor should be submitted to applications@giramondopublishing.com by 5pm Monday 23 September 2024.

‘take your left hand / place the palm over your mouth / use lots of force to make sure / no air can come in or out’

Three Giramondo authors have been shortlisted for the 2024 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards in Poetry: Luke Beesley for In the Photograph, Amy Crutchfield for The Cyprian and Autumn Royal for The Drama Student.