SOPHIE SPARHAM

Sophie Sparham is a sci-fi fantasy writer, spoken word artist and music journalist from Derby. She has released her first book, Snow in Hell, and is currently half way through penning her follow up, God Sized to Go. She’s extremely passionate about the representation of LGBT+ characters and feminist issues within her genre of fiction and believes that they need to be more prevalent.

I’ve always written a wide range of genders and sexualities into my work. Some would could it queer fantasy, I just believe it’s the way I chose to write. In my next novel, ‘God Sized to Go’, my main character is a transgender female that ends up becoming trapped in her own mind and making friends with her conscience. Together, they battle a creature that’s trying to create a new world for godly purposes. In my presentation, I plan to discuss how I visualised and wrote a transgender character; from the research to the representation and decisions made in print. As well as this, I want to discuss the concept of the mind being another world in a sci-fi and fantasy story and interpretation of this when creating the world.

The interpretation will include the choices made when deciding the aesthetics of the world and decisions taken of how to connect all the minds of beings together in one landscape. I will discuss how I used description and language to help my audience picture the world, despite it not being a physical entity.The whole concept of the book is about questioning the idea of a god, what it takes to become a god and perception of what a god’s power is. Within my presentation, I intend to discuss this in relation to the world that I have created.