Elegy, Southwest is a novel which entwines a tragic love story with an intelligent and profound consideration of the way we now live alongside environmental breakdown; an elegy for lost love and for the landscape that makes us.

• DATE:   Thursday 17 April 2025
• TIME:    6:30 pm to 8:00 pm
• LOCATION:   Better Read Than Dead, 265 King St, Newtown (b/w Mary and Church Sts). Their event space is accessible via a stair lift. 

Tickets for the Event are $5 (or $40 for Event plus a copy of Elegy, Southwest) and can be purchased here.

Old Girl, Madeleine Watts (2007) is a writer of fiction, stories, and essays. Her debut novel, The Inland Sea, was shortlisted for the 2021 Miles Franklin Literary Award and the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing. Her writing has been published in Harper’s Magazine, The Believer, HEAT, The White Review, Literary Hub, The Paris Review Daily, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Irish Times, Bookforum, and Meanjin among others. She is the winner of the 2015 Griffith Review Novella Competition. Madeleine grew up in Sydney, and sometimes Melbourne. After a decade living in New York, she is now based in Berlin. Elegy, Southwest is her second novel.

Amy Lovat is the author of Mistakes and Other Lovers and the current program manager of the Newcastle Writers Festival. She has a PhD in English and Writing and lives with her wife, a brood of animals, and thousands of books across unceded Awabakal and Gadigal Country in NSW, Australia.