Libby Angel & Helen Elliott

How do we become who we are? In this edition of Literati Glitterati, Mel chats to the authors of two books consumed by precisely this question. 

The first is Where I slept, an autofictional work set in nineties Melbourne by writer and poet Libby Angel, which charts a young woman’s journey towards artistic self actualisation as she traverses the city’s sharehouses, squats and streets. Libby chats with Mel about unreliable narrators, writing visually, and the role of music in her practice.

The second, Eleven Letters to You, by prominent literary critic Helen Elliot, is a memoir told in letters to the people who shaped her as a young person coming of age in the fifties and sixties: her neighbours, teachers, colleagues, mentors. Helen and Mel talk everyday kindness, Helen's gleaming memory, and her ferocious girlhood reading habit.