Published in 2025
304 pages
Sinéad Stubbins is a writer, editor and cultural critic in Melbourne. She writes popular TV recaps for Junkee, most notably on Game of Thrones, The Bachelor, The Bachelorette and Neighbours, and also writes about film, music and culture for The Guardian, ELLE, frankie, The Big Issue, New York Magazine, Pitchfork and others.
In 2016 she contributed to the University of Queensland Press anthology Doing It and has also appeared in two frankie press collections, Something to Say and Look What We Made. She has spoken at the Emerging Writers’ Festival, National Young Writers’ Festival, Melbourne International Film Festival and The Wheeler Centre’s Storytelling Gala. In 2018 she was long-listed for the Richell Prize for Emerging Writers. In 2020 she sold her essay collection In My Defence, I Have No Defence plus a second book to Affirm Press.
What is this book about?
In this wildly original and deeply unhinged story, Sinéad Stubbins turns her keen but empathetic eye on the lies we tell about ourselves in order to belong. Part anxious millennial fever dream, part searing workplace satire, this corporate gothic novel is perfect for fans of Yellowface, Nightbitch and Such a Fun Age.
You’re a stinkbug and they’re worried if they come near you, your stench will get all over them and they won’t be able to wash it off.
When Edith and a select group of employees at Winked advertising agency are sent to Consequi, an elite three-day work retreat in the remote mountains, she sees an opportunity to impress her bosses and dodge an inevitable restructure. But this is no ordinary corporate retreat. Trapped together in the revamped convent, the threat of mass redundancy looming over them, their phones confiscated and the team-building activities becoming increasingly extreme, the ‘work family’s’ cracks begin to widen – and Edith has a secret that threatens to make her the office the stinkbug. When Edith realises there’s something suspicious about Consequi, she’s faced with a conform and shut up, or accept stinkbug status and find out what’s really going on.
