Chosen Family: the new Madeleine Gray Launch with Wuthering Dykes

A friendship is a love story.

A bold, romantic, queer and epic literary novel for all readers, Chosen Family is the brilliant new novel from the bestselling author of Green Dot!

We could not be more excited to have joined forces with the babes from Wuthering Dykes Book Club to welcome to fabulous Madeleine Gray *all the way from Australia*!

Written with Gray’s trademark compassion, wit and dark humour, Chosen Family is a modern classic in the making that we can't WAIT to share with you all!

The Book

Books about friendship are not often described as love stories, but this is one.

At the age of twelve, Nell has accepted that hers will likely be a friendless existence. She’s not interested in boys or makeup or competing to see who can eat the least – so fitting in at her all-girls’ school feels impossible.

But then, a new girl arrives at school.

Eve has short hair like a boy, a wicked sense of humour and an unshakable confidence that she will find her place in the world. The moment they meet, Nell begins to rethink the whole friendless existence thing.

As they grow into themselves, Nell and Eve will love each other and hurt each other – through the chlorine-scented savagery of adolescence; long, drunken nights in share houses and gay bars; and the highs and lows of parenthood.

And always, despite unspoken feelings and sexual confusion, they will choose each other. Again, and again. As friends, as lovers, as family.

The Author

Madeleine Gray is a novelist, academic, arts writer and book critic - author of critically acclaimed Green Dot and newly published Chosen Family. 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 Neilma Sidney Literary Travel grant. Madeleine has a PhD in feminist literary theory from the University of Manchester, an MSt in English from the University of Oxford and a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Art History from the University of Sydney. Madeleine unionised her bookshop workplace - one of the first bookshops to unionise in Sydney, her politics reflected in Green Dot - a novel about the millennial ennui with late stage capitalism.

The Chair

Anahit Behrooz is a writer, editor, and journalist based in Edinburgh.

She is the author of BFFs: The Radical Potential of Female Friendship, out with 404 Ink. She also writes extensively on film, literature, and cultural politics for publications such as i-D, Little White Lies, AnOther Magazine, gal-dem, The Big Issue, and Girls on Tops.

Anahit currently work as Books Editor and Events Editor at The Skinny, and has worked as a commissioning editor at Bella Caledonia on a year-long project exploring decolonisation in the Scottish arts.SheI also regularly covers festivals such as Venice Film Festival, London Film Festival, Edinburgh International Book Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe.