Sofie Verraest writes fiction, as well as non-fiction about literature, architecture, and the city. In 2018 the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation for Creative Writing selected her as a fiction fellow. In 2020 she will be a fellow of the Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart, Germany), which offered her a six-month paid residency to work on her novel. Her work has appeared in Ninth Letter, Green Mountains Review, Deus Ex Machina, and elsewhere. She holds a PhD in literary studies, has taught alongside Sulaiman Addonia at his Creative Writing Academy for Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Brussels, and currently teaches at Ghent University as well as the Royal Arts Academy KASK. She lives in Brussels, where she founded Snug Harbor, a series of literature evenings in English.
“Davis frequently operates as kind of phenomenologist. In her fiction, we get access to the outside world only if it’s part of someone’s inner world. The filter of perception is always there.”
Sofie Verraest talks with Lydia Davis about her new book, Essays One, as well as the difference between writing essays and stories, the role of “coherence” in each genre, the climate crisis and the role of writers, and more.
