Longlisted for the 2026 Stella Prize
Lucy Nelson – Wait Here
Fiction · Summit Books Australia (an imprint of Simon & Schuster Australia)
About the Book
A dazzling collection of hilarious and heart-wrenching stories united by a groundbreaking theme: each is a sidelong glance at the lives of women who – either by choice or by circumstance – will never be mothers and who feel every way it is possible to feel about it.
A dancer discovers she can never have children – a revelation that pales in comparison to the other ways her body has betrayed her. Two elderly sisters who’ve been inseparable throughout life make a momentous decision. A wet nurse at Coney Island’s infamous ‘Incubator Babies’ sideshow is haunted by the ghost of her own stillborn daughter. A young woman worries about the lack of male role models in her little niece’s life…
For the women in Wait Here, who can’t, don’t or won’t have children, childlessness is a hard-won prize, a freedom, a stain, a joy, a battle, a trifle, a conundrum, a wound, an uneasy comfort on a burning planet.
It is nothing. It is everything.
“The glistening stories in this debut collection ask questions of mothering and its absence, of how we shape a family and build a life… These stories are virtuosic.”
– 2026 Stella Prize Judges
About the Author
Lucy Nelson
Lucy Nelson has been published in Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Big Issue, Southword and elsewhere. She has received the Newcastle Short Story Award, the Writing NSW Varuna Fellowship and the Templeberg Fellowship from Writers Victoria. She lives with her husband on unceded Wodi Wodi and Dharawal Country. Wait Here is her first book.
Further Reading
Reviews
“A striking reflection on women’s lives in all their beautiful complexity … Funny and heart-wrenching, this collection will stick with you.” – Books+Publishing
“InWait Here, each tender glimpse into the lives of women without children aches with immense insight. A deeply compassionate collection where every story feels like a gift.” – Emily O’Grady, author of Feast
Links
Judges’ Report
The glistening stories in this debut collection ask questions of mothering and its absence, of how we shape a family and build a life. What is common to the women in these stories is their childlessness. It is one aspect of their being but not their entire selves. As Nelson writes, ‘It is nothing. It is everything.’ Nelson understands short form fiction and uses the form in incredibly interesting and innovative ways. These stories are about women and their complicated relationships with the decision to have children. The subject feels ripe for exploration in short-form fiction. The collection, with each story accumulating, enacts an invitation to the reader to lean in closely and see these women’s complex inner lives play out on the page. The stories are incredibly varied in both tone, perspective and style, showcasing the full range of Nelson’s literary skills and craft. These stories are virtuosic.
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