Gay Lynch

Dr Gay Lynch writes essays, novels, hybrid memoir pieces, academic papers, book reviews and short stories on unceded Bunurong land, part of the Kulin nation. She is an adjunct lecturer in creative writing and English at Flinders University.

In 2005, she published Cleanskin, her first novel, mentored as a SAWC (South Australian Writers Centre) prize, by Eva Horning, then-Eva Sallis. In 2019, she published her second novel Unsettled, mentored by Irish writer Niall Williams. Her essays and stories have appeared in Best Australian Stories, Meanjin and Griffith Review, among other publications.

Lynch has been short and long listed for FISH Flash and Short Memoir prizes. In 2023, she chaired and presented sessions for the Australian Short Story Festival (ASSF), the International Conference on Short Story in English (ICSSE), and launched her new work in Pratic: a Magazine of Contemporary Writing for Asia-Pacific Writers and Translators (APWT) at the Ubud Readers and Writers Festival. In 2024, she won the Creative Prose Prize 1st Prize for AAALS (American Association Australasian Literary Studies).

 She has also worked as a journal editor, teacher-librarian, school coordinator for the May Gibbs Writers in Residence Program and workshop leader. Her engagement with middle-school students sparked her interest in teen/young adult and coming-of-age novels, with their authentic voices, focus on personal growth and ethical issues, and redemptive leanings. 

Originally shortlisted for the Adelaide Festival Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript in 2002, Harm None is her first young-adult novel.