2026 Stella Prize

Wait Here

Longlisted for the 2026 Stella Prize

By: Lucy Nelson

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Paperback | 4 June 2025

At a Glance

Paperback
288 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
21.6 x 15.3

Paperback

RRP $32.99

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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.

About the Author

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.

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