Lucie Elven is the author of
The Weak Spot, out with Soft Skull. Madeleine Watts is the author of
The Inland Sea, published by Pushkin Press. The two authors met in late 2016 in New York, after which Madeleine read Lucie’s short stories and Lucie read Madeleine’s essays. They met again in 2019, when Madeleine bumped into Lucie at London Pride, walking in the middle of a thronged street. A few months later, they caught up properly at a pub, where it was pouring with rain and they ended up drinking a fair bit of wine and gin. With both of their novels released this winter, the two authors emailed back and forth about temperature, atmosphere, blackouts, and bleary dreams.