Summit Books Australia is delighted to announce a stunning acquisition for this new imprint led by Jane Palfreyman. Wait Here is a dazzling collection of short fiction by Port Kembla writer and multiple award winner Lucy Nelson. ANZ rights were acquired from Martin Shaw Literary for publication in July 2025.

Each of the stories in Wait Here is based on the female experience of childlessness. Some of them directly examine the grief, stigma and liberation of a childless life. Others offer sidelong glances into 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. For these women, being childless is a hard-won prize, a freedom, a stain, a joy, a battle, a conundrum, a wound, a sinister comfort on a burning planet. In the eyes of this immensely talented writer, childlessness is fundamental, insignificant, intrinsic and incidental. Nelson’s pitch-perfect stories ask urgent questions: how do we grieve the children we never had and what shape does their absence take in our lives? Is the body of a childless woman less female than the body of a mother? During a climate crisis, is not having children an ethical choice? 

Author Lucy Nelson said, ‘It is a wild and dreamy thrill to know I will soon hold this odd little book in my hands. I’m especially grateful that it will be guided out of my head and into the world by living legend Jane Palfreyman – who has launched and nurtured the work of writers I greatly admire.’ 

Publisher Jane Palfreyman added, ‘Wait Here seized me from its first line and stunned me with its deadpan humour and deep insights. It spoke directly to me and profoundly moved me. This astonishing and illuminating collection is quite possibly the book I’ve been waiting a lifetime to read, and I can’t wait for other readers to discover its power and compassion. I am so proud to be publishing Lucy at Summit Books and so looking forward to reading more from this remarkable writer.’ 

Lucy Nelson is already an accomplished writer whose work has been published in Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Big Issue, Southword and others. She has received the Newcastle Short Story Award, the Writing NSW Varuna Fellowship and the Templeberg Fellowship from Writers Victoria. She has been shortlisted for the Seán Ó Faoláin International Short Story Competition, and longlisted for Hachette’s The Richell Prize. Wait Here is her first book.