Who would we be without our chosen family? This afternoon we’re celebrating the people in our lives who started as friends and lovers and became vital members of our chosen family. 

We’re giving away copies of a new novel that explores this uniquely queer topic: Chosen Family by Madeleine Gray. Stop by the Bureau for a free copy of the book (while supplies last). We’ll have a table set up where you can write postcards of love and appreciation for your chosen family members. Leave them with us and we’ll put them in the mail for you! 

Bring members of your chosen family with you and everyone will receive a 15% discount off any purchase in the bookstore. 

About Chosen Family

An exuberant and irreverently funny novel about one gorgeously messy friendship-feud-unrequited-love-affair set in Sydney across eighteen years. Chosen Family is a queer modern classic that reminds us that sometimes the most fulfilling and life-saving relationships are the ones that are the hardest to define.

Nell Argall and Eve Bowman are both brilliant, odd, and friendless. When they meet on the brutal battlefield that is their posh all girls’ high school during their first year there, both their lives are changed forever. From school, to university, to careers, Nell and Eve’s relationship is a life raft that is also a Medusan stare, frozen in time.

When the passion, guilt, shame, and joy that perpetually twists and turns between them finally implodes, Nell abruptly walks away, leaving Eve alone at the helm of the gloriously unorthodox family they’ve built with their seven-year-old daughter, Lake. Eve finds herself left wondering: Can the wounds of adolescent betrayal ever really heal? Can we ever really understand what’s going on in someone else’s head? And what’s love got to do, got to do with it?

About Madeleine Gray

Madeleine Gray is the author of the novel Green Dot. She has written for the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, the BBC, Electric Literature, and Sydney Review of Books, among other publications. She lives in Sydney, Australia.