Dr Gay Lynch

Academic Status

College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

place Humanities
GPO Box 2100, ADELAIDE, SA, 5001
Gay Lynch writes and researches essays, novels, academic papers, book reviews, and short stories, on unceded Boonwurrung land and adjunct to Flinders University. 
In 2024, she won the Creative Prose 1st Prize, AAALS (American Association Australasian Literary Studies).
In 2023, Lynch chaired panel sessions, presented at a plenary session, presented a paper ‘The Short Story Train: a Concatenation,’ now published, and read from her work.
  1. ICSSE (16th International Conference on the Short Story in English, Singapore)https://www.icssesg2023.com/writers
  2.  
  3. The Ubud Writers and Readers’ Festival, 18-22nd October; represented the APWT (Australian Pacific Writers & Translators) launch as a commissioned contributor to Pratik: Fire and Rain (A Magazine of Contemporary Writing, Nepal)
  4.  
  5. The Australian Short Story Festival (Adelaide, SA.), 8-12 November.
 Unsettled (2019), an Australian historical novel launched at (ISAANZ);  ‘On Work’ a Covid-inflected essay appeared in Meanjin (Winter 2021); ‘On Dance’ TEXT Oct. 2021; ‘On Smoking,’ TEXT Oct. 2022
Qualifications
2008: PhD Creative Writing, Flinders University
2004: Masters Creative Writing: Adelaide University (HD)
Honours, awards and grants

2024 ‘Hebe’s Lament,’ Creative Prose 1st Prize, AAALS (American Association Australasian Literary Studies)

2024 Longlisted FISH Flash Fiction: ‘Family Violence’

2024 Longlisted FISH Flash Fiction: ‘Thanks. No.’ 

2022 ‘An ‘Indecent Proposal’ & ‘Lydia & Clytie’, Honourable Mention and Runner-Up HM, ICSSE (International Short Story in English), Short Story Competition.

2022 Shortlisted, WAM, Write Around the Murray, Short Story Award

2019 Longlisted, FISH Short Memoir Prize, The Yellow Scarf.'

2017 Meanjin’s Best Fiction, ‘M.’

2016 Longlisted for Best Australian Stories 2016 (Black Inc)

2016 Shortlisted and second place for UK Residency, International Short Story Writer, Wonder Short Story Festival, Charleston

2016 Shortlisted, FISH Short Memoir Prize

2015 ‘The Abduction of Ganymede’, Australia’s Best Short Stories 2015

2013 Shortlisted Allen and Unwin, Varuna Fellowship

2009 Part-time Teaching Award, Humanities, Flinders University

2008 Selected Flinders University Internship Program

2007 Joint-Winner of Prize for Best Postgraduate Paper, AAWP (Australian Association of writing Programs) Annual Conference, University Canberra.

2007 Airfare Donated by CAL to present 'Performance Anxieties in the Preface: The Historical-Fiction-Writer as Cheerful Whore' at ASAL (Association for Study Australian Literature) Annual Conference, University of Queensland.

2007 Nominee, Davitt Award (Australian Women’s Crime Fiction)

2007 One of Six Finalists, People’s Choice Awards: SA Writers’ Festival [Cleanskin]

2005 Flinders University, URB Visiting Research Fellow Grant: Ireland ($3,000)

2005 Australian Postgraduate Award, Flinders University

2002 Short-Listed: Adelaide Festival of Arts Literature Award for New Manuscript ['Intent']

2000: Eva Sallis Master Class (1999-2000) [Cleanskin]

Key responsibilities

Adjunct Lecturer, Department English, Creative Writing & Australian Studies, Flinders University

Teaching interests

Creative Writing, Historical Fiction, Prose Fiction, Australian Children's Fiction, English Canon

From 2004-2013, Gay Lynch taught across 20 English and creative writing topics
Further information

Particular interest in projects on:

  • Australian contemporary fiction, short and novel-length
  • Life writing
  • Australian historical fiction writing; settler and frontier stories; South Australian history
  • Ngarrindjeri history and culture (collaboration with Yunggorendi essential); studies of contemporary Indigenous texts; writing race
  • Nineteenth-century Australian-Irish diasporic studies, including the history of Galway, Celtic myths and apocryphal stories, Irish-Australian writers
  • Nineteenth-century Irish fiction(projects welcome on Maria Edgeworth, Lady Augusta Gregory, Lady Morgan, Anthony Trollope)
  • Australian poet Adam Lindsay Gordon
  • James Joyce