Debut novelist loves to talk love

MADELAINE Lucas will take to the stage at this year’s Bendigo Writers Festival with award winning and highly successful author Christos Tsiolkas in an event titled What’s Love Got to Do With It.

The pair will discuss all things love, loss and Lucas’ debut novel Thirst for Salt.

The Australian-born Brooklyn-based author said she can’t wait to take part in her first Bendigo Writers Festival.

“The wonderful team at Allen & Unwin were able to get me an invitation,” she said. “I’m thrilled because as a debut novelist, it’s so competitive to get festival slots.

“I’m really excited for the conversation with Christos Tsiolkas.

“It’s exciting to be in conversation with a writer of that calibre, and I’m also really excited to hear his thoughts about love and love in the novel.”

Love and all it entails is something that Lucas said has always fascinated her and she looks forward to talking about it.

“I guess for me, the love story is a way of tackling much larger existential themes,” she said. “What gives our lives meaning? How do we love, how do we grieve, how do those experiences shape us?

“Not only in the choices we make in our own relationships but going back to the first examples we see of love from our parents or our families.

“I’m anticipating a broad-ranging conversation, about love and craft, family and memory and hope. It should be a lot of fun.”

Her debut novel Thirst for Salt has long been coming Lucas said.

“It’s had a very long gestation,” she said. “I first wrote about these characters when I was 24, the age my narrator is when she goes on this kind of life-changing holiday.

“She meets a man who’s 18 years, her senior. I started thinking about those characters almost a decade ago.

“I wrote a short story about them and I thought that would be it, but I just kept getting drawn back to these characters and their stories.”

You will find Lucas and Tsiolkas and their conversation What’s Love Got To Do With It on stage at the Bendigo Bank Theatre at The Capital from 5pm on Friday, 5 May.

For more information on the festival visit bendigowritersfestival.com.au.