Orchid Lovell is a young Romani woman haunted by a fear of being found out. Her family has been chased out of town before. After settling in a seemingly idyllic northern mining town that she soon understands as rife with unseen violence, Orchid finds solace in a lush orchid fen where she doesn't fear the town's judgment. Amid the green beauty of the fen, Orchid meets her beloved Jack, and marries him in a secret blackfly-infested ceremony.
But the fen doesn't only harbor life. Here, dead girls take revenge on the men who murdered them, luring them into murky waters. Despite the dead's relentlessness, one man evades the panni raklies. After a devastating attack linked to the expansion of the mine, Orchid's fate is entwined with the panni raklies' ruthless justice.
Written in over 100 dreamy mini-chapters, this novella explores the tenuous reality of the Romani diaspora living in troubled times on troubled lands.

Lynn Hutchinson Lee's profile page

Lynn Hutchinson Lee is a multidisciplinary artist and writer. She was the first place winner of the Joy Kogawa Award for Fiction and a finalist for the 2023 Guernica Prize. Origins of Desire in Orchid Fens is her longform fiction debut. Her novel, Nightshade, will be published by Assembly Press later in 2025.

"Lynn Hutchinson Lee leads us through a decadently aromatic world in her novella: notes of orchids, chanterelle mushrooms and plush moss, sterilized and burned bedsheets abound. Just out of frame, girls long-dead slip past us, organza-like. A dizzying and beautiful debut, Origins of Desire in Orchird Fens explores life as a Romani woman in Canada, and the flowers that refuse to die amidst the decaying world of capitalism." - Daisuke Shen, author of Vague Predictions & Prophecies and Funeral