Lin Van Hek

• Name — Lin Van Hek • Alias — Lyn van Hecke • Birth Name — Lyn Whitehead • Born — 1944 10 04 • Birthplace — Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Occupation — Artist, musician • Past Member Of — Difficult Women • Website — http: www.linvanhek.com Lyn Whitehead (born 4 October 1944), known professionally as Lin Van Hek Lyn van Hecke, is an Australian writer, singer, painter, designer and artist. She was a vice-president of the Society of Women Writers and co-founder of the literary-music group Difficult Women.

Van Hek was born in Melbourne and lived in Europe and India while she was growing up.

Van Hek co-wrote and sang the song "Intimacy" for the soundtrack of the film The Terminator (1984). She later recorded a solo CD River of Life featuring songs of New Zealand writer Kath Tait. More recently, she has performed with her partner, Joe Dolce in Difficult Women, that began with a series of feminist literary salons van Hek held in the 1980s. Van Hek also worked for over two decades with a group of women in North Vietnam designing, manufacturing and trading in hand-embroidered silk garments and textiles with a focus on fair trade and worker ethics. Van Hek is a prolific painter and writer. She is described by Booker Prize-winning author Keri Hulme as writing "like an angel giving the devil her due."

• The Hanging Girl (Misfit Books, 1988) • The Ballad of Siddy Church (Spinifex, 1997) • Katherine Mansfield's Black Paper Fan (Difficult Women, 2010)

• Collections • The Slain Lamb Stories (Independent, 1979) • Anna's Box: selected short stories (Difficult Women, 2006) • Stories • Title — |Year — |First published — |Reprinted/collected — |Notes • Mrs Black — 2003 • The Goddess Paddock — 2004 • This Most Privileged of Madnesses — 2013 • Mikel's Christmas — 2017 • Mrs Black — 2017 • Herman and Manning — 2019

• |Year — Review article — Work(s) reviewed • 2020

• 1988 winner of the Melbourne The Age Short Story Award • 2015 Best Australian Poems, edited by Geoff Page. • 2016 & 2017 winner of the Society of Women Writers short story contest.