Madeline Cash has always lived somewhere between devotion and defiance. Between the young girl who once climbed onto a chair to rescue a book confiscated past bedtime, and the novelist who now makes her debut with a story about a family on the brink of combustion. Before Lost Lambs became one of this year’s most talked-about debuts – and we’re only two months into 2026 – she was the founding editor at Forever Magazine, drawn to the innovative and the alternative, to voices that deserved a platform.
In her novel, Cash’s tone is poignant yet porous, capturing girlhood across a vast emotional register. She describes it as “a period of extreme sensitivity paired with very little power,” a volatile combination that flows beneath the story that follows the Flynn family’s unraveling in the novel, and one that feels strikingly true to life. Rather than smoothing those contradictions into something palatable, she lets them breathe. The result is a messy, sharp, and darkly humorous story. And after gaining comparisons to White Teeth and The Virgin Suicides since its earliest reviews — comparisons she describes as a “high honour” — Lost Lambs has only grown in stature.
Here, we speak with Madeline Cash about girlhood, influences, her favourite books, and how becoming a novelist was a natural progression for her.
Lost Lambs has been compared to White Teeth and The Virgin Suicides. How do you relate to those comparisons — did you have any inspirations you looked up to when writing this book?
Both comparisons are a high honour. I love both of those books immensely. Other inspirations include absurdist novels’ Elect Mr Robinson for a Better World Donald Antrim and The tetherballs of Bougainville Novel Mark Leyner.
How did you approach writing girlhood across such different registers of desire, paranoia, and rebellion?
Desire, paranoia, rebellion — those registers often coexist, sometimes within the same afternoon. Girlhood, to me, is a period of extreme sensitivity paired with very little power, which creates this volatile mix. The writing had to be porous enough to let those contradictions live side by side without resolving them. I also wanted to resist flattening those experiences. Letting them remain messy felt closer to how girlhood actually operates.
You were already embedded in literary culture as an editor before publishing fiction yourself. What was it that made you step into the role of novelist?
I’d always wanted to write a novel. I didn’t always want to be an editor. I’m dyslexic and don’t have the most commercial taste. The magazine had a very niche focus on alternative literature and I was excited to give a platform, albeit small, to these writers. “Stepping into the role of novelist” wasn’t so much an active choice as a natural progression from reading to editing to writing myself. Reading was actually sort of a form of rebellion for me as a child. It drove my father crazy, all the reading. He thought I might be maladjusted, not playing outside, etc. I remember once (I was 12 maybe?) he plucked the book I was reading out of my hand, I think it was A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, read a passage at random, said, “what the hell is this?” and put it on a shelf out of reach. I climbed on a chair to get the book after he’d gone to bed. We don’t speak anymore. Did this answer the question?
Creatives like Lena Dunham have praised you as a writer, saying you “have a voice like no other,” and Lost Lambs has sparked great attention on BookTok—how did you land on the novel’s tone and voice?
Well, shucks. I think it’s just my own voice, heavily influenced by the voices I love, Dunham included.
On your bedside table currently, what are you reading?
I just finished The Year of Magical Thinking and now my mother and I are book clubbing The Trial. Just some feel-good literature.
What is your favourite book of all time?
Ooof, tough one. Maybe Faulkner. Absalom, Absalom! Maybe Don Dellilo. The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock is very important to me too.
Is there a literary character that you most identify with?
I love The Marriage Plot. Maybe because it’s about a girl named Madeline who goes to Sarah Lawrence so I think there is an 80% chance it was written about me, despite my being in grade school at the time of its publication.
Do you have a favourite reading spot?
Trains!
