Published in 2025
218 pages
Madison Griffiths is an author, artist and producer. In 2022, she was awarded the Walkley Foundation Our Watch Award for Excellence in Reporting on Violence Against Women. Her work largely centres around the lived experiences of women, especially those whose realities are shrouded in stigma, opposition and rebellion. Her debut book Tissue (Ultimo Press) was released in 2023, and is a boldly poetic meditation on abortion and what it has the power to represent. She is the co-producer of Tender, a podcast that tracks the journey of individuals as they decide to leave an abusive relationship. She has just released her second book Sweet Nothings.
What is this book about?
Thirty years on from The First Stone, Madison Griffiths is ready to blow the conversation wide open
The professor who whispers sweet nothings into his students’ ears makes sweet nothings out of them.
Sweet Nothings is a gripping account of four women’s interwoven stories in the wake of having once been students who embarked on romantic relationships with their university professors.
Through the stories of Rose, Blaine, Cara and Elsie, Griffiths explores what these relationships tell us about power and interrogates how class and gender are expressed and exploited in our academic institutions.
By tackling sex, desire and its consequences in a university setting, Griffiths looks keenly at the gender imbalances that inform these affairs, and how thorny betrayal becomes when a woman is made to believe she is the ‘exception to the rule’ only to find out she is one of many.
Griffiths’ portrayal reveals, with searing candidness, the labyrinth of ego, ambition, and abuse that can begin in the classroom. It’s an unflinching critique of the hierarchies that distort relationships and can leave lasting scars.
