Join us for an event with local author Madeleine Gray in conversation with Lucy Pearson, to celebrate the launch of Madeleine's new book, Green Dot - the most anticipated debut novel of 2023.

WHEN: Thursday, 19th October 2023. Please arrive at 6.45pm for a prompt 7pm start.

WHERE: Gertrude & Alice Café Bookshop, 46 Hall St. Bondi Beach.

TICKETS:

ADMISSION: $25.00 (excluding external fees). Your ticket includes admission to the event, a drink on arrival and nibbles throughout the evening.
ADMISSION + BOOK BUNDLE: $50.00 (excluding external fees). Your ticket includes admission to the event, a drink on arrival and nibbles throughout the evening, as well as a copy of Madeleine's new book, Green Dot.

‘Brilliant. Riveting. Sharp. Funny. Dark. I want to give Green Dot all the adjectives but will content myself with saying it is one of the best books you will read all year’ - Elizabeth Day

Copies of Green Dot will be available for purchase on the day and she will happily sign them after the talk - priority in the signing line will be given to those who have chosen to purchase their book(s) from Gertrude & Alice, as appreciation for their support.

About the Author:

Madeleine Gray is a writer and critic from Sydney Australia. She has written arts criticism for SRB, Overland, Meanjin, The Lifted Brow, The Saturday Paper, The Monthly, etc. In 2019 she was a CA-SRB Emerging Critic, and last year she was a finalist for the Walkley Pascall Prize for Arts Criticism, a finalist for the Woollahra Digital Literary Non-fiction award, and a recipient
of a Nielma Sidney Literary Travel grant. She has an MSt in English from the University of Oxford and is a current doctoral candidate at the University of Manchester, researching contemporary women's autobiographical literary theory. Green Dot is her first novel.

About the Book:

A witty, profound and painfully relatable debut novel exploring solitude, desire, and the allure of chasing something that promises nothing.

Hera Stephen is clawing through her mid-twenties, working as an underpaid comment moderator in an overly air-conditioned newsroom by day and kicking around Sydney with her two best friends by night. Instead of money or stability, she has so far accrued one ex-girlfriend, several hundred hangovers and a dog-eared novel collection.

While everyone around her seems to have slipped effortlessly into adulthood, Hera has spent the years since school caught between feeling that she is purposefully rejecting traditional markers of success to forge a life of her own and wondering if she's actually just being left behind. Then she meets Arthur, an older, married colleague. Intoxicated by the promise of ordinary happiness he represents, Hera falls headlong into a workplace romance that everyone, including her, knows is doomed to fail.

With her daringly specific and intimate voice, Madeleine Gray has created an irresistible and messy love story about the terrible allure of wanting something that promises nothing; about the joys and indignities of coming into adulthood against the pitfalls of the twenty-first century; and about the winding, torturous and often very funny journey we take in deciding who we are and who we want to be.

About the Host:

Lucy Pearson has been an avid and ardent reader for as long as she can remember. After graduating with a degree in double English, she went on to read the BBC’s Top 100 - a feat which introduced her to some of her all time favourite books. She started her blog, The Literary Edit in 2012, for which she won the London Book Fair’s inaugural Book Blogger of the Year award. In 2019 she co-founded The Bondi Literary Salon with G&A. Her favourite book is A Little Life and her favourite authors include Daphne Du Maurier, James Baldwin, John Steinbeck and Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche.