WINNER OF THE MICHAEL MURPHY MEMORIAL PRIZE
POETRY BOOK SOCIETY CHOICE

In the language of fan fiction, a 'Mary Sue' is an idealised and implausibly flawless character: a female archetype that can infuriate audiences for its perceived narcissism.

Such is the setting for this brilliant and important debut by Sophie Collins. In a series of verse and prose collages, Who Is Mary Sue? exposes the presumptive politics behind writing and readership: the idea that men invent while women reflect; that a man writes of the world outside while a woman will turn to the interior.

Part poetry and part reportage, at once playful and sincere, these fictive-factive miniatures deploy original writing and extant quotation in a mode of pure invention. In so doing, they lift up and lay down a revealing sequence of masks and mirrors that disturb the reflection of authority.

A work of captivation and correction, this is a book that will resonate with anyone concerned with identity, shame, gender, trauma, composition and culture: everyone, in other words, who wishes to live openly and think fearlessly in the modern world.

Who Is Mary Sue? is a work for our times and a question for our age: it is a handbook for all those willing to reimagine prescriptive notions of identity and selfhood.

Sophie Collins's fearless and brilliant debut: a series of verse and prose collages, exploring themes of identity, shame, gender, trauma, composition and culture.

About the Author
Sophie Collins grew up in Bergen, North Holland, and now lives in Edinburgh. She is co-editor of tender, an online arts quarterly, and editor of Currently & Emotion (Test Centre, 2016), an anthology of contemporary poetry translations. small white monkeys, a text on self-expression, self-help and shame, was published by Book Works in 2017 as part of a commissioned residency at Glasgow Women's Library. Who Is Mary Sue? is her first poetry collection.


Book Information
ISBN 9780571346615
Author Sophie Collins
Format Paperback
Page Count 112
Imprint Faber & Faber
Publisher Faber & Faber
Weight(grams) 150g
Dimensions(mm) 197mm * 129mm * 11mm