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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...

for the spirit of Jonathan Harvey   There was a fisherman, who lived in a village on a great bay, into which he and the other fishermen of the village would take their boats out every morning to let fall their nets The bay was so sheltered, so calm, that the fishermen could call to one another over the water, their voices clear in the damp air, especially on a spring morning such as this was, with white mist hanging over the sea and a faint crescent moon still visible on the wide blue-grey sky They had not long been out this morning Not long at all Now was no time to be heading home, but he saw them, all the rest, his friends, turn their prows back towards the village He shouted to them, but received no answer   Soon he was alone   On a whim he decided to aim for the other side of the bay from the village, a place where pinewoods came down to the sand   He landed, pulled his boat up onto the crunching beach and then, when that was done, became aware of music, something between the shimmering chime of small bells and the luminous breath of panpipes There were also flowers floating down, he could not tell from where, flowers of colours he had never seen before And there was a growing fragrance, an infinite sweetness   Then he saw it, iridescent and caught in the branches of one of the trees ahead, undulating in the breeze and turning from gold to ultramarine to purple to deep green As he walked slowly towards it the scent grew, and after he had reached up and taken it out of the tree he placed it against his face, its exquisite softness, how it seemed to be cool and warm at the same time, how colours slowly moved through it, how it smelt of lavender and oranges and anis and walnut leaves and the neck of his beloved   Stop, said the spirit-being That cloak is mine That feather cloak is mine   I found it, said the fisherman   You cannot wear

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...

READ NEXT

fiction

Issue No. 1

From the Town

Desmond Hogan

fiction

Issue No. 1

In the grape hyacinth blue jersey – yellow strip at V-neck, blue tie, navy trousers of Kinsale Community School,...

Art

January 2017

New Communities

Robert Assaye

Art

January 2017

DeviantArt is the world’s ‘largest online community of artists and art-lovers’ and its thirteenth largest social network. Its forty...

feature

Issue No. 9

Ordinary Voids

Ed Aves

Patrick Langley

feature

Issue No. 9

I am standing in a parallelogram of shrubbery outside London City Airport. Ed is twisting a dial on his Mamiya...

 

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