Lucy Hamilton

Lucy Hamilton is a novelist and short story writer from Dronfield. She completed her BA, MA and PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Sheffield. Lucy lived briefly in Australia, before moving to Hong Kong, where she began work on her first novel, The Widening of Tolo Highway, published by Penguin Random House SEA in 2022.

While writing Tolo Highway, Lucy also trained as a Behaviour Analyst and negotiation trainer, dividing her time between the USA, South Asia and the UK, which has inspired her second novel, Exits and Departures. While studying in Sheffield, Lucy dabbled in slam poetry, performing at numerous spoken word events. She also writes short stories, celebrating the understated richness of Sheffield’s characters.

Lucy has taught Creative Writing, Literature and Stylistics at The University of Nottingham’s campus in Ningbo, China. In 2022 she returned to the UK with her husband and two cats, and now works at the University of Leeds. She currently reviews Asian fiction for Cha Literary Journal.

ANNA RETURNS TO FACE A PAST SHE NEVER TRULY LEFT BEHIND

It wasn’t the middle but the very edge of nowhere. It was always just a little too still. It is 2017. Typhoon Hato has ripped through the streets of Hong Kong. National Day is looming. The momentum of the 2014 Umbrella Revolution has faded. British woman, Anna, has returned to her old village in the New Territories to search for Kallum, a disillusioned local activist, from whom she has heard nothing since her departure two years ago.

Suspecting he was targeted for his involvement in the protests, Anna widens her search, scouring the streets of Kowloon and the Island for signs he is alive. Alone in her tiny, rented room in the notorious Chungking Mansions, gruesome flashbacks disturb her sleep. Paranoia swells. Memory, delusion, and reality begin to blur.

Against a backdrop of construction works, storm damage and scaffolding, Anna is confronted by a daunting panorama. She may know more about the past than she’s let herself believe.

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