Hebe's Lament and Other Stories

<p><strong><em>'These brilliant stories buzz in the mind like a wasp at a window long after the last page has been turned.' </em>Carol Lefevre author of <em>Bloomer</em></strong></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>Gay Lynch sets her first collection </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(38 38 38 1)>Hebe's Lament and Other Stories</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)> in the contemporary cities of Budapest and Cabourg Melbourne and Shanghai along with historical Ireland and rural South Australia where she has lived as an adult and child.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>Zeitgeisty paradoxes - anarchy and care death and dying nature and its destruction poetry and play sex with bots violence and justice fractured hope - generate riffs from feminist social realist and speculative perspectives.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>Blinded by indecision protagonists act. A</span><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(38 38 38 1)>n </span><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>art academic rescues a beautiful boy an accountant abandons her dementing father a coroner risks her reproductive rights a DFAT careerist falls for a commitment-phobe </span><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(38 38 38 1)>a dirt farmer cares for his disabled child a vet student loses her dog at a Celtic festival a police officer takes a king hit in the line of duty</span><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)> tutors harass students </span><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(38 38 38 1)>a homeless woman becomes stranded at a writers' festival.</span></p><p><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>The collection's lead story 'Hebe's Lament' won the 2024 American Association of Australasian Literary Studies prize for Creative Prose.</em></p>