Sweet Nothings

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. 

Madison Griffiths is a writer, artist and producer based in Melbourne. She is the co-producer of Tender, an award-winning Broadwave podcast that follows what happens in the aftermath of abusive relationships. Her essays have been published widely in The Guardian, SBS, VICE, Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings and more. In 2022, she won the Our Watch Award as administered by the Walkley Foundation for Excellence in Reporting on Violence Against Women and Children.

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