CONTRAPPASSO is an independent biannual magazine of international writing published in Sydney, Australia. Issue 4 is our most international to date, featuring writing from Mexico, China, Russia, Italy, the UK, Ireland, New Zealand, the USA, and Australia. Highlights include the Crate-Diggers' Symposium - in-depth interviews with America's leading rare music anthologists - and a series of tributes to the late Seamus Heaney. We have a newly translated short story by the Mexican writer Juan Villoro and new fiction by Clive Sinclair and Elisabeth Murray; with poetry by David Howard, Hong Ying,...

CONTRAPPASSO is an independent magazine of international writing published from Sydney and Buenos Aires. Issue 8 contains writing from Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Nicaragua, Spain, France, the UK, the USA, China, and the Phillipines. We feature an interview with F. H. BATACAN and ANDREA PASSION-FLORES; previously untranslated classic Argentinean fiction by ROBERTO ARLT; and contributions from BILL ADAMS, ALICIA AZA, RICHARD BERENGARTEN, BLANCA CASTELLON, RICK DEMARINIS, GENG XIANG, ELIAS GREIG, PHILIP HAMMIAL, KENT HARRINGTON, ROGER HICKIN, J. KATES, NOEL KING, LU YE, MORRIS LURIE,...

This special issue of Contrappasso on 'Writers at the Movies' follows our special 'Noir' issue of late 2013. Once again we've assembled a collection of poems, essays, fiction, and interviews-some republished, some appearing for the first time. In this instance, the common theme is 'literary cinephilia.' Some of the pieces collected here focus on a single film: Alfred Hitchcock's Murder (1930), Orson Welles's rediscovered Too Much Johnson (1938), Elia Kazan's Man On A Tight Rope (1952), Douglas Sirk's Written on the Wind (1955), and Robert Siodmak's Custer of the West (1968). Other pieces...

This special issue of Contrappasso - our ninth - follows on from our themed 'Noir' and 'Writers at the Movies' collections. The phrase 'Long Distance' touches on an idea and a sensation that most people will confront at some time. It has no absolute value (how long is a piece of string?) and can make itself felt anywhere, for foreseeable reasons or for no reason at all. What is certain is the depth of its emotional effect. Isolation, removal from origins or remoteness from destinations, desire for an absent person, estrangement from a person close by, memories of a bygone period, journeys in...