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Writing
Selected Anthologies
Wagtail
The Roma Women's Poetry Anthology
My poem “Tobacco Harvest” in Wagtail: the Roma Women’s Poetry Anthology, edited by Jo Clement, Butcher’s Dog Press, U.K.
“Butcher’s Dog Publishing proudly presents Wagtail, our debut anthology of poetry, with many thanks to the support from ERIAC, the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture. Wagtail celebrates voices and visions from the margins. The book seeks to address historic and ongoing failures by the publishing industry to fairly represent the Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller (GRT) diaspora.”
Nightshade
Tipping Point
My short fiction “Nightshade” in Tipping Point, Room Magazine 45.2
“Nightshade” tells the story of a family of Romanichal women living, working, and travelling with their troupe of puppets in the Ontario tobacco belt.
“Room is Canada’s oldest feminist literary journal, and has published fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, art, interviews, and book reviews for forty-five years. Published quarterly by the West Coast Feminist Literary Magazine Society, also known as the Growing Room Collective, Room showcases writing and art by people of all marginalized genders, including cis and trans women, trans men, nonbinary and two spirit people.”
Plumcake
Food of My People
My short fiction “Plumcake” in Food of My People, edited by Candas Jane Dorsey and Ursula Pflug, Exile Editions, Canada.
“Eating is a symbolic and magical act, a transformation, a covenant, a ritual, a comfort, a necessity. Food is often integral to the magic, the meetings, the processes of fantastic fiction: from myth and legend to high fantasy, from hard-science-fiction to post-modern magic realism. And whether in Hansel and Gretel or Soylent Green, the myth of Persephone or 2001, Alice in Wonderland or Alien, food-themed stories offer a mixed menu of good and evil, light and darkness. In this versatile collection, Candas Jane Dorsey and Ursula Pflug – both award-winning senior writers of literary speculation – have gathered a delectable buffet of genre writing that explores our attraction to the candy coating and our fascination with the poisoned apple. Paired with each story is a recipe, real or fantastical, to consume with pleasure… or at your own risk!”
Night Divers
Cli-Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change
My short fiction “Night Divers” in Cli-Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change, edited by Bruce Meyer, Exile Editions, Canada.
“Reacting to the warnings sounded by scientists and thinkers, writers are responding imaginatively to the seriousness of changing ocean conditions, the widening disappearance of species, genetically modified organisms, increasing food shortages, mass migrations of refugees, and the hubris behind our provoking Mother Earth herself. These stories of Climate Fiction (Cli-fi) feature perspectives by culturally diverse Canadian writers of short fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and futurist works, and transcend traditional doomsday stories by inspiring us to overcome the bleak forecasted results of our current indifference.”
Of “Night Divers”, Derek Neuman-Stille writes: “In beautiful prose, Lynn Hutchinson Lee reveals the ritual magic of submersion in water. “I felt my hands, my palms, nerves, fingertips, really felt them. Something had been moved around. Everything out there, inside me. My lungs, voice, bones, skin, all made of water and stars”.
Tillsonburg
A Romani Women’s Anthology: Spectrum of the Blue Water
My creative non-fiction “Tillsonburg” in A Romani Women’s Anthology: Spectrum of the Blue Water, edited by Hedina Tahirović Sijerčić and Cynthia Levine-Rasky, Inanna Publications. “Tillsonburg” interweaves the story of my father’s family in the Ontario tobacco belt with historical and contemporary narratives of anti-Romani racism in England.
“A Romani Women’s Anthology: Spectrum of the Blue Water is grounded upon Romani women’s lived experiences, and confers epistemic privilege on critical insights that derive from their authentic and personal knowledge. Romani women are impressively diverse in their attachments, status, beliefs, and identities. The chapters in this book illustrate this multiplicity by traversing writing motifs. The book is a dynamic blend of life writing, creative work, research essays about identity, childhood, immigration, work, art, memory, love, spirituality, activism, advocacy, leadership, and other themes affecting the lives of Romani women.”
One-Eyed Daddy
Sar o Paj/ Like Water
My poem “One-Eyed Daddy” in Sar o Paj/ Like Water
Anthology of poetry by Romani women, edited by Hedina Tahirović Sijerčić, published by Kafla Intercontinental (India) and Amber Press (Australia). Cover illustration from Rosa at the Lido, my painting in Red Tree’s mural Greeting to Taniperla, Scarborough, Ontario.
http://www.romnja-power.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/like-water-sar-o-paj.pdf
“Cornelia in the Water” appeared last year in India’s State of Matter online speculative fiction journal. Two poems, “Five Songs for Daddy” and “On a Train, 1996 (Lancashire),” were published in Romani Folio, Drunken Boat International Journal of Literature and the Arts (U.S.). My flash fiction “The Raw Meat Motel” is forthcoming from Book of Matches Literary Mag, Issue 8 (U.S.), and my short fiction “The Mission House Guests” appears in the September 2023 issue of Weird Horror (Canada.) In 2024, “Vestigial Structures” will be published in the anthology Stone to Stone: Writings by Romani Women, Propertius Press (U.S.).
My writing has also appeared in literary journals.
My writing has also appeared in literary journals. You’ll find my short fiction “Fluttering,” about a woman who discovers glorious pleasure late in her life, on page 71 of Monofiction, Issue 3 (U.K.).
Five Songs for Daddy
A lament for the death of memory, “Five Songs for Daddy”– first written for the Sar o Paj/Like Water anthology edited by Hedina Tahirović Sijerčić – was reworked as a spoken word piece and produced by Norman Verrall for the sound installation “Canada Without Shadows.”
A project of chirikli collective and Red Tree Collective, “Canada Without Shadows” was conceptualised and developed by Hedina and me. “Canada Without Shadows” was installed at BAK (Basis voor aktuelle kunst), Utrecht, Netherlands, and in Call the Witness at the Roma Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennale, in Venice, Italy, 2011. In 2013, “Canada Without Shadows” was curated into “Good Girls – Memory, Desire, Power” at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, Romania.
“Five Songs” was a component of the four-part sound installation which included “Suno 1, Suno 2” (Dream 1, Dream 2) by Hedina; the stories of Ilona, Timea, Monika V., Gizella, and Monika B., five Hungarian Romani women in Canada; and birdsong. In 2019, “Five Songs” was installed in “Audio Out” at the Art Gallery of York University.
“Five Songs” tells the story of my father, from his childhood in northern England to the family’s arrival in the southern Ontario tobacco belt, where they picked tobacco, built houses, painted signs, tarred roofs, and, as they had done in England, continued to work as travelling entertainers with their troupe of puppets.
Listen to “Five Songs for Daddy” here.