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Sophie Mackintosh
Sophie Mackintosh's fiction has appeared in Granta and The Stinging Fly, among others. She was the winner of the 2016 White Review Short Story Prize and the Virago X Stylist short story prize. Her debut novel, The Water Cure, is published by Hamish Hamilton in the UK and forthcoming from Doubleday in the US.

Articles Available Online


Lena Andersson's ‘Acts of Infidelity’

Book Review

July 2018

Sophie Mackintosh

Book Review

July 2018

Acts of Infidelity is the second novel by Lena Andersson that follows unlucky-in-love heroine Ester Nilsson, and it’s another scalpel-sharp look at a doomed...

Fiction

May 2018

Self-Improvement

Sophie Mackintosh

Fiction

May 2018

I had been sent back from the city in disgrace, back to my parents’ house in the country. It...

The following text is the condensed result of over ninety hours of dialogue with Ricardo Melogno, recorded between November 2014 and December 2015 The conversations were much longer and more disparate, and the topics were covered with less continuity and greater chaos than in the current text My edits respect the words of the interviewee while compressing, grouping and organising them chronologically and thematically, with the goal of providing structure to his story I believe I have respected the concepts expounded by Ricardo, but I take full responsibility for any differences or mistakes arising from the editing process C B   TURNING TOWARDS THE DARKNESS   ‘I was told that someone saw you levitate’   [Melogno furrows his brow, smiles with amusement]   ‘Who?’   ‘Someone who knew you from Unit 20 and was convicted again They brought him here and when he saw you, he asked to be kept as far away from you as possible He said that you were evil, and that he had seen you levitate’   ‘Oh, I know who that is, ha ha Well, you see, that kid’s real impressionable Among other major issues he has   Here’s the thing with me Inside the prison, things pass from mouth to mouth and they start adding up Over the years it’s sort of snowballed Even now, when they send in the search parties (they’re not guards from here, but from the ‘regular’ prison, and they come every two or three months) they find the shrine in my cell with all the offerings and the candles, they say: ‘Old man, what are you into here? What’s all this strange stuff?’ But these guys are more modern these days, they ask more out of curiosity, not out of fear   [On his left arm he has a tattoo with three symbols on top of each other: at the top is a 666, in the middle an inverted crucifix and on the bottom a reversed swastika The line of symbols is flanked by two snakes writhing rampantly from left to right]   ‘Why the reversed swastika?’   ‘The regular swastika, the one used by the Nazis, represents turning towards the sun, towards the light So I got mine

Contributor

April 2016

Sophie Mackintosh

Contributor

April 2016

Sophie Mackintosh’s fiction has appeared in Granta and The Stinging Fly, among others. She was the winner of the...

Grace

Prize Entry

Issue No. 17

Sophie Mackintosh

Prize Entry

Issue No. 17

14. It comes for me in the middle of the day when I am preparing lunch, quartering a tomato then slicing each segment in...

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fiction

August 2017

Lengths

Matthew Perkins

fiction

August 2017

1   I sat at the kitchen table while Valentine prepared cups of flowery, smoky loose leaf tea. Antoine...

feature

September 2012

Existere: Documenting Performance Art

David Gothard

Jo Melvin

John James

Rye Dag Holmboe

feature

September 2012

The following conversation was held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, in May 2012. The event took place...

feature

Issue No. 16

Editorial

The Editors

feature

Issue No. 16

The political and internet activist Eli Pariser coined the term ‘Filter Bubble’ in 2011 to describe how we have...

 

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