Sophie Buchaillard is a writer, educator and campaigner based in South Wales. Her second novel, Assimilation (Honno) explores family secrets, belonging, and inherited trauma. Her debut novel, This is Not Who We Are (Seren Books) was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year in 2023 and explored the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi through the relationship between two teenage pen friends.
Born in Paris to parents born and raised in Morocco, Sophie has widely travelled and lived in France, Spain, England and the States, before settling in South Wales in 2001.
Sophie’s writing is inspired by absence, memory, and movement. She explores the themes of connection and belonging, in response to experiences of fragmentation, e.g. grief, trauma, migration. Sophie believes in the power of narrative stories to heal.
Her second novel, Assimilation (Honno, 2024) explores how travel, memory and family stories shape who we are, often in conflict with the notion of a nation-state. Her debut novel This Is Not Who We Are (Seren Books) was shortlisted for the Rhys Davies Trust Fiction Award and the Wales Book of the Year 2023.
Her short stories and essays have appeared in a wide array of literary magazines and newspapers, including Wales Arts Review, ByLine Times, Murmuration Magazine, The Friday Poem, and the ecological magazine Modron. Sophie also contributed to the recent Woman’s Wales, edited by Emma Schofield (Parthian, 2024), the travel writing collection, edited by Steven Lovatt An Open Door: New Travel Writing for A Precarious Century (Parthian, 2022) and the COVID-inspired Square Wheel Press collection Together and Apart (2021).
Recently, Sophie started writing poetry, alongside working on her memoir.
Sophie is a Translation Board Member for The Other Side of Hope, an Arts Council England funded magazine showcasing the writing of refugees and immigrants. She was Hay Writer at Work in 2023.
Previously, Sophie worked as a policy advisor, a campaigner, a coach and a counsellor. She was shortlisted for a Chwarae Teg Womenspire Award in 2017, for her work advising the Welsh Government on improving gender parity in business and education, as co-author of Talented Women for a Successful Wales (Welsh Government, 2016). She continues to campaign for civil and human rights.
Sophie holds a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from Cardiff University, where she taught until February 2024.
Assimilation
(Honno)
A mother with a colourful past. A daughter desperate to find herself. Two women wrestling with unspoken traumas, hoping to find peace and somewhere to rebuild their lives.
One family's story set against the backdrop of some of the biggest political and humanitarian events of the century, this book explores the challenges of identity, belonging and womanhood, and the stories we tell in order to fit in.
Spanning continents and slipping between time, this sophisticated and affecting novel shows how the secrets of the past never quite disappear, casting long, long shadows over the present day. Mixing elements of magical realism with high-octane thriller, Assimilation boldly takes in a great sweep of the world, hurtling us from cocaine cartels in Colombia to gothic mental hospitals in Wales, bridging the baked lands of Morocco and the elegant avenues of Paris. It’s quite the trip, tellingly taking us through the times in which we live.
Jon Gower, The Turning Tide: A Biography of the Irish Sea
Assimilation is a perceptive and compelling novel that invites the reader to seek out new ways of negotiating the labyrinth of personal and cultural identity. Sophie Buchaillard weaves her tale with skill and acumen, offering rare insights into migration, foreignness, family, and much else besides.
Richard Gwyn, The Colour of a Dog Running Away
Such a brilliant book to travel with and to read in those ‘in between’ places. A hymn to the complicated nature of home and the somehow serendipitous yet inevitable ways we find it. I loved this scrapbook of memory and longing.
Caryl Lewis, Drift (Winner Wales Book of the Year 2023)
A story from the past with clear relevance in our current climate, Buchaillard holds up a mirror and asks us to reflect on the consequences of our own choices.
Connor Allen, The Making of a Monster (Former Children Laureate for Wales)
This is Not Who We Are
(Seren Books)
1994. The Genocide in Rwanda is raging.
Over that summer, two sixteen-year-old girls exchange an unlikely correspondence between Paris and the refugee camp of Goma. One day, the letters stop.
Twenty-five years later, Iris embarks on a quest to discover what happened to Victoria. Could it be that those responsible are closer than she thought?
This Is Not Who We Are was included in the Wales Arts Review top ten Welsh novels for 2022, and shortlisted for the Rhys Davies Trust Fiction Award and the Wales Book of the Year 2023.
Sophie Buchaillard’s novel is a stark and terrifying reminder that only the most fragile screen separates the familiar from the abyss, the comforts of home from the most obscene and extreme violence. It is an elegant and sombre reflection on what it means to retain one’s humanity in the face of a brutal and dehumanising cataclysm.
Richard Gwyn, author of the Colour of a Dog Running Away
You write beautifully. Right from the beginning ‘If humanity could crawl into such a device, could we erase the indelible marks which stain us?’ etc etc! When i read a book the characters can become my friends and I don't want to leave them! Your book was like this. Not easy to read in parts but we need to know about what really happened in Rwanda. I have read other books about the genocide but I do feel yours has been genuinely researched.
Jane Munro, reader
A stunning first novel that hooks you very quickly and won’t let you go… Searingly well written, this is both shocking and beautiful on the nature of brutality and forgiveness. I can’t recommend this book enough!
El Tophero, Amazon review
“Goodness me. That was phenomenal.”
Elizabeth Choi
Woman’s Wales?
(Parthian)
The Dissonance and Diversity of Devolution Through the Lives of Women in Wales.
Edited by Emma Schofield
Contributors include:
Mari Ellis Dunning
Jasmine Donahaye
Norena Shopland
Rae Howells
Grace Quantock
Krystal Lowe
Sophie Buchaillard
Nansi Eccott/Jessica Laimann
Short stories
An Open Door
New Travel Writing for a Precarious Century
(Parthian Books)
Edited by Steven Lovatt
The history of Wales as a destination and confection of English Romantic writers is well known, but this book reverses the process, turning a Welsh gaze on the rest of the world.
Writers featured:
Eluned Gramich / Grace Quantock / Faisal Ali / Sophie Buchaillard / Giancarlo Gemin / Siân Melangell Dafydd / Mary-Ann Constantine / Kandace Siobhan Walker / Neil Gower / Julie Brominicks / Electra Rhodes
An Open Door was included in the Wales Arts Review top ten non-fiction for 2022.
Short stories available online
Here, you will find links to some of Sophie's short stories, published on line and available for free.
Hiraeth
Short story published in Murmurations Magazine - Issue 2 (Autumn 2021)
Metamorphosis
Published in The Other Side of Hope Magazine, online volume, number 1, autumn 2021 (ISSN 2754-2505)
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Together & Apart
A collection created during the first COVID-19 lockdown, bringing 13 authors of poetry, short fiction, and non-fiction. The anthology explores a wide range of emotions and perspectives in the wake of a global pandemic.
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