Sophie Cooke at Alchemy

September 7th, 2009 at Globe Cafe as part of the Alchemy Prague Readings and Performance Series.

Sophie Cooke

Back in 2000, Sophie Cooke's short story 'Why You Should Not Put Your Hand Through The Ice' won runner-up prize in the MacAllan/Scotland on Sunday Short Story Competition, which was then the biggest short story award in Europe. Since then, she has written many more short stories. 'Skin and Bones' was commissioned by BBC Radio 4 and read by the actress Laura Fraser; other stories have been published in anthologies; and Cooke recently performed her newest work at the Kikinda Short Story Festival in Serbia. She has also written two novels, 'The Glass House' and 'Under The Mountain', both of which have received extremely good reviews. After the publication of 'Under The Mountain' - a playful novel which examines responses to violence and the shifting currency of truth - Aesthetica magazine described Cooke as 'an important voice for this age'. Critics compare her work to that of Virginia Woolf and of contemporary screenwriters such as Thomas Vinterberg. Originally from Scotland, Cooke currently lives in Berlin.