Luminous Gerberas

(HEAT 15 - new series)

In this issue Craig McGregor writes on the trials of going bush in the Byron Bay hinterland, in a place called Paradise by Repentance Creek; Marion Halligan remembers the crying of Aunt Edie and the madness of Uncle Ted; Mireille Juchau recovers her grandmother's past, in fact and fiction; Conrad Del Villar traces the significance of the tattoo in the Northern Philippines; and John Mateer finds himself in mirrors, after being immigrated to Australia in his youth. In an interview with the founders of Steerforth Press, Noel King explores the logic of independent literary publishing; Stephanie Trigg writes on academic and personal blogging; Zoë Sadokierski surveys the graphic novel; and Hugo Bowne-Anderson discusses the obsessions of Thomas Pynchon. In fiction, Jess Huon and Catherine McNamara offer stories with an intoxicating sense of place, the one in India the other by the Hawkesbury River. The poets include Anthony Lawrence, Judy Johnson, Anna Couani, Nathan Shepherdson, Michael Farrell, Tara Mokhtari, Sam Byfield and Rose Lucas. And the featured artist is Vivienne Shark LeWitt, whose meticulously rendered story-book paintings have mysterious and unsettling resonances.