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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...

Sometimes a banana with coffee is nice It ought not to be too ripe – in fact there should be a definite remainder of green along the stalk, and if there isn’t, forget about it Though admittedly that is easier said than done Apples can be forgotten about, but not bananas, not really They don’t in fact take at all well to being forgotten about They wizen and stink of putrid and go almost black   Oatcakes along with it can be nice, the rough sort The rough sort of oatcake goes especially well with a banana by the way – by the way, the banana might be chilled slightly This can occur in the fridge overnight of course, depending on how prescient and steadfast one is about one’s morning victuals, or, it might be, and this in fact is much more preferable, there’s a nice cool windowsill where a bowl especially for fruit can always be placed   A splendid deep wide sill with no wooden overlay, just the plastered stone, nice and chilly: the perfect place for a bowl Even a few actually, a few bowls in fact The sill’s that big it can accommodate three sizeable bowls very well without appearing the least bit encumbered It’s quite pleasant, then, to unpack the pannier bags and arrange everything intently in the bowls upon the sill Aubergine, squash, asparagus and small vine tomatoes look terribly swish together and it’s no surprise at all that anyone would experience a sudden urge at any time during the day to sit down at once and attempt with a palette and brush to convey the exotic patina of such an irrepressible gathering of illustrious vegetables, there on the nice cool windowsill   Pears don’t mix well Pears should always be small and organised nose to tail in a bowl of their very own and perhaps very occasionally introduced to a stem of the freshest redcurrants, which ought not to be hoisted like a mantle across the freckled belly of the topmost pear, but strewn a little further down so that some of the scarlet berries loll and bask

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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poetry

May 2013

Flatlands

Saskia Hamilton

poetry

May 2013

Horses and geese in a sodden field. Solitaries with luggage on a wet platform. Postage-stamp house on a bit...

Feature

Issue No. 19

Ill Feelings

Alice Hattrick

Feature

Issue No. 19

My mother recently found some loose diary pages I wrote in my first year of boarding school, aged eleven,...

Art

July 2014

Operation Paperclip

Naomi Pearce

Patrick Goddard

Art

July 2014

‘I began at this point to feel that politics was not something “out there” but something “in here” and of...

 

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