The Library of Fire

In this issue, Brian Castro considers Boccaccio’s The Decameron and the melancholy fate of authorship, as Jennifer Rutherford turns the mirror on Castro’s The Garden Book and its relationship to Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. John Hughes meditates on the library and the possibilities it cannot contain as an idea of possibility. Kris Hemensley walks Urquhart Street and evokes the concurrence of all his experiences, Marion Halligan remembers a winter’s night in Alassio, Saskia Beudel is introduced to the Warlpiri world view by Frank Baarden and the letter N. Sex and the generations threaten havoc in stories by Gillian Mears and Gerald Windsor; Felicity Castagna writes on convicted murderer Kathleen Folbigg; Michael Mohammad Ahmad portrays the end of an intense love affair. Noel King interviews Brent Cunningham on small-press distribution, Beth Driscoll explores the non-literary factors at work in literary awards. Amongst the poets: Jane Gibian, Kay Rozynski, Chris Price, Tom Shapcott, Kate Llewellyn, J.S. Harry, Jennifer Maiden, and Judith Bishop translating French poet Gérard Macé on poetry and mime. In colour, John Young offers three takes, spanning thirty years, on making art in a diaspora.

ESSAYS

• Kris Hemensley – This Secret Walking
• Marion Halligan – If on a Winter’s Night Some Travellers
• Saskia Beudel – View from Yuendumu Mining Store
• Brian Castro – In Camera: Arrested Motion & Future Mourning
• Jennifer Rutherford – Flaubert in the Garden
• Beth Driscoll – How Prizes Work in the Literary Economy
• Noel King – Selling Poetry
• Judith Bishop – Gérard Macé on Mime

FICTION

• John Hughes – The Book of Libraries
• Gerard Windsor – And the Children’s Teeth Shall be Set on Edge?
• Gillian Mears – Easter Cake
• Michael Mohammed Ahmad – Something for Lina
• Felicity Castagna – Kathy

POETRY

Kay Rozynski, Kate Llewellyn, J. S. Harry, Vivian Smith, Stephen Edgar, Thomas Shapcott, Chris Price, Fay Zwicky, Michael Farrell, Jennifer Maiden, Jane Gibian

ART

John Young – Three Works

The Library of Fire
HEAT 18, New series, 2008
ISBN 978 1 920882 51 8, ISSN 1326-1460
$24.95