Madeleine George Selected Works

Meet Diane, a permaculture gardener dripping with butch charm. She’s got supernatural abilities owing to her true identity—the Greek god Dionysus—and she's returned to the modern world to gather mortal followers and restore the Earth to its natural state. Where better to begin than with four housewives in a suburban New Jersey cul-de-sac? Madeleine George pens a hilarious evisceration of the blind eye we all turn to climate change and the bacchanalian catharsis that awaits us, even in our own backyards.

Watson: trusty sidekick to Sherlock Holmes; loyal engineer who built Bell’s first telephone; unstoppable super-computer that became reigning Jeopardy! champ; amiable techno-dweeb who, in the present day, is just looking for love. These four constant companions become one in this time-jumping tribute (and cautionary tale) dedicated to the people—and machines—upon which we all depend.

When Brodie, a gifted linguist, learns that the baby she's carrying may have a genetic abnormality, she struggles to decide whether she can love a child who may never learn how to speak. As she seeks comfort from three unlikely intimates—her grad student girlfriend, an elderly immigrant who is among the last speakers of a dying language, and an unusual gorilla at the zoo—she discovers new forms of communication, taking her deeper and deeper into unfamiliar, but thrilling, territory beyond words. Three actors play ten roles in this gentle fantasia about the beauty and limits of language.

Dean Wreen is not having a good week. Her college is in dire financial straits and a plan to close its tiny, all-but-forgotten natural history museum is sending unexpected shock waves across campus and out into the local community. At home, her ex-lover, Greer, is staying with her—sending shock waves of a different sort through her relationship with her current (and much younger) girlfriend, Andromeda. Town-gown relations are in tatters! The local newspaper is erupting in violent protest! Even the awful, historically inaccurate dioramas in the museum have started mouthing off. A screwball sex comedy about the perils of monogamy, certainty, and academic administration.