Madeleine Watts is an Australian writer based in New York. Her debut novel, The Inland Sea, was shortlisted for the 2021 Miles Franklin Literary Award, the most prestigious literary prize in Australia. Her non-fiction has appeared in Harper's, The Guardian, The Believer, Literary Hub, The Paris Review, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. Her short fiction has been published in Guernica, HEAT, The Lifted Brow and The White Review, and her novella, Afraid of Waking It was the winner of the 2015 Griffith Review Novella Competition. She earned her MFA in Writing from Columbia University in 2019.
News
WritingMadeleine Watts '19 Shortlisted for the 2021 Miles Franklin Literary Award
On Wednesday, the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund of Australia and award trustee Perpetual announced the shortlist for this year's Miles Franklin Literary Award. Writing alumna Madeleine Watts '19 is among the six Australian authors to be chosen as finalists for this prestigious award.
Events
On Climate Writing: Assistant Professor Leslie Jamison Interviews Alumna Madeleine Watts '19 and Author Elizabeth Kolbert
Assistant Professor Leslie Jamison moderated a discussion on climate writing as part of The Center for Fiction On America series. Jamison is the author of three nonfiction books—The Recovering The Empathy Exams, and most recently, the essay collection Make it Scream, Make it Burn—as well as a novel, The Gin Closet. She is a contributing writer for the New York Times magazine.
Writing
The Dangerous Undertow of 'The Inland Sea' Charted in Debut Novel by Alumna Madeleine Watts ’19
As if nature were mirroring her own erratic life, the unnamed narrator of?The Inland Sea?by alumna?Madeleine Watts?‘19 careens headlong into a spree of self-destructive behavior in her native Australia surrounded by an eerie ecological nightmare of brush fires, flooding, and suffocating heat.
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Undergraduate Creative Writing
Writing Alumna 2019