Sophie Buchaillard is a freelance writer, editor, critic and translator living in South Wales. Her second novel, Assimilation was described as a blend of magic realism and thriller. Her first novel, This is Not Who We Are, was nominated for the Wales Book of the Year. Recently, she was a finalist for the Bridport Poetry Prize. Her debut poetry pamphlet is due out in October. She is currently working on her third novel.

Sophie Buchaillard was born in Paris to a family with roots in Morocco and South East Asia, and lived in France, Spain, England, and the United States. She moved to Wales at the age of twenty-three, and has lived there longer than anywhere else by now.

Sophie writes about belonging through fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Her second novel, Assimilation (Honno, 2024), examines how travel, memory, and family stories influence our identities, often clashing with the idea of a nation-state. Her first 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.

She has contributed essays to Woman’s Wales? (Parthian, 2024), An Open Door (Parthian, 2022), and the COVID-themed collection Together and Apart (Square Wheel Press, 2021). Her essays have appeared in various literary magazines, including Wales Arts Review, ByLine Times, Modron Magazine and The Friday Poem.

She edits and translates works from French to English and serves on the Translation Board for The Other Side of Hope, a magazine for refugee and immigrant writers. She was the Book Reviews Editor for Intersectional Perspectives: Identity, Culture, and Society.

Sophie holds a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from Cardiff University, and she taught there until February 2024. Her research focuses on travel writing's impact on identity from colonial times to the present. She was also a Hay Festival Writer at Work in 2023. Currently, she is working on a novel and a collaborative non-fiction project related to her thesis.

Recently, Sophie started writing poetry. She was a finalist in the International Bridport Poetry Prize 2024, and her debut collection is due in October.

Novels

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.

Assimilation / Honno

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.

  • Assimilation – 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, author of Drift (Winner Wales Book of the Year 2023)

  • This is Not Who We Are – 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. Richard Gwyn, author of the Colour of a Dog Running Awa

    Richard Gwyn, author of the Colour of a Dog Running Away

  • Assimilation – 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.

    Jon Gower, author of The Turning Tide: A Biography of the Irish Sea

  • This is Not Who We Are – A multi-layered and very moving novel about the Rwandan genocide and the culpability of the French government. The central idea of pen friends whose letter-writing is disrupted by war feels original and offers a fruitful way into this complex subject matter. An excellent debut and I can't wait to see what Sophie Buchaillard writes next.

    Katherine Stansfield, author of The Visitor and The Magpie Tree

Anthologies

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.

Woman’s Wales?

Parthian Books
Edited by Emma Schofield

The Dissonance and Diversity of Devolution Through the Lives of Women in Wales.

Contributors include:
Mari Ellis Dunning/Jasmine Donahaye/Norena Shopland/Rae Howells/
Grace Quantock/Krystal Lowe/Sophie Buchaillard/Nansi Eccott/Jessica Laimann

Poetry pamphlet

Painting over the cracks

Lucent Dreaming
October 2025

Sophie’s first poetry pamphlet will be published in October 2025 by Lucent Dreaming.

lucentdreaming.com

Other works

Prizes and distinction

Judge for the Swansea and District Writer Circle Competition December 2024

Shortlisted for the International Bridport Poetry Award 2024

Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy since 2023

Shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year 2023

Shortlisted for the Rhys Davies Fiction Prize 2023

Shortlisted for the Chwarae Tag Womenspire Award 2017

Talks, panels and other events

6 March 2025: ‘Strong Female Characters’ in conversation with Meredith Miller and Catrin Kean, hosted by Honno Press, Waterstone’s Cardiff

4 March 2025: Sophie chaired a panel on Creative Facilitation hosted by Literature Wales, alongside Taylor Edmonds and Sian Hughes.

7 November 2024: ’Voyages and Vagabondages’ in conversation with Richard Gwyn, Swansea Cultural Institute

2 November 2024: ‘The role of the writer in a polarised world’ Panel with Özgür Uyanik and Carole Burns, Llantwit Major

27 May 2024: Hay Festival: in conversation with Francesca Reece and Tiffany Murray

28 April 2024: Llandeilo Literature Festival: in conversation with Meredith Miller

13 March 2024: ‘A World of Difference’ Hay Festival: After Hours, Wales Millennium Centre

9 March 2024: ’Intrusive Noises and Uncomfortable Silences: deconstructing the experience of otherness through sounds and objects - a three dimensional poem’, Turner House - Penarth

You Tube videos

Sophie took part in the Hay Festival After Hours Event in the Wales Millennium Centre, in March 2023
https://youtu.be/OLgUUVYKvcc?si=LxRrSaEcKUxDfuzH

Sophie talks about her debut novel, This Is Not Who We Are.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLY29z6mJ9lZLkrFDQgudt57tX5hmFRota

Freelance commissions

Poems
‘Dear Godfather’ in Nation Cymru’s Poem on Sunday Series (December 2024)

‘My heart is full of words’ in Sanctuary/Noddfa (Bardic Vintage Books, 2024)

Book reviews
The Crazy Truth by Gemma June Howell Nation Cymru July 2024

Unspeakable Beauty by Georgia Carys Williams, Nation Cymru, May 2024

Sarn Helen by Tom Bullough, Modron Magazine, issue 2 (April 2023)

Talking Translation | In Conversation with Amaia Gabantxo in Wales Arts Review (3.08.2022)

Essays
‘Colonialism, Genocide and the UK-Rwanda Deal’ in Nation Cymru, March 2024

‘The Pyrenees’ in Plots & Plants in Modron Magazine, January 2024

‘Imagined travels: a sea horizon journey’ in The Sea Horizon: Part I in Wales Arts Review, November 2023

What have we learned from the Rwandan genocide? in the Welsh Agenda - Institute of Welsh Affairs, August 2022

Developing Credible and Complex Characters in Writers & Artists, June 2022

The Colonial Dynamics of Priti Patel’s Rwanda Deal in Byline Times, May 2022

Tangled Thoughts from a Migrant Mother in Wales Arts Review, April 2022

Poetry: A Lockdown Journey in The Friday Poem, March 2022

Together and Apart in ‘Anthology One: Together & Apart’, Square Wheel Press, August 2020

Rwanda, the 1994 Genocide: Lessons of Literature in Wales Arts Review, May 2020

Interviews
In this interview, Sophie considers what it means to be a writer in Wales. (Nation.Cymru March2024)
https://nation.cymru/culture/on-being-a-writer-in-wales-sophie-buchaillard/

In ‘Talking Translation’, Sophie interviews the Basque translator Amaia Gabantxo about her journey through translation, and what it meant to her to be able to bring the words of Basque novelist Miren Agur Meabe to the British public. (Wales Arts Review 3/08/2022)
https://www.walesartsreview.org/talking-translation-in-conversation-with-amaia-gabantxo/

Digital Corner

Poetry
In ‘Dear Godfather’, Sophie remembers the childhood presence of her grandfather, who fail victim to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. (December 2024 nation.cymru)
https://nation.cymru/culture/poem-on-sunday-dear-godfather/

Essays
In ‘Colonialism, Genocide, and the UK-Rwanda Deal’ Sophie revisits an earlier article, and takes stock of Britain’s relationship with Rwanda (March 2024, nation.cymru)
https://nation.cymru/opinion/colonialism-genocide-and-the-uk-rwanda-deal/

In ‘The Pyrenees’ Sophie recalls a summer in the Basque mountains between France and Spain, an unforgiving space that taught her to respect the nature we belong to. (Modron Magazine 21/01/2024
https://modronmagazine.com/2024/01/21/plots-plantsthe-pyrenees/

‘Imagined travels: a sea horizon journey’: In the first of a two-part mini-series Christina Thatcher, Garry Fabian Miller, Brennig Davies and Sophie Buchaillard reflect, critically and creatively, on Garry Fabian Miller’s Môrwelion I The Sea Horizon photography exhibition which was displayed at National Museum Cardiff between February and September 2023. (Wales Arts Review 30/11/2023)
https://www.walesartsreview.org/the-sea-horizon-part-i/

In the context of the ‘Rwanda Deal’ Sophie reflects on what we should learn from the 1994 Genocide of the Tutsi (Institute of Welsh Affairs - 2/8/2022)

https://www.iwa.wales/agenda/2022/08/rwanda-genocide-lessons/

In ‘Metamorphosis’, Sophie recalls a train journey between Cardiff and Paris, and asks what it means to ‘go back’.
https://othersideofhope.com/sophie-buchaillard-metamorphosis.html

Short Story
Written to coincide with Halloween, ‘Hiraeth’ was inspired by a holiday in Pembrokeshire.
https://murmurationsmag.wordpress.com/2021/09/03/hiraeth/

Book Reviews
The Crazy Truth by Gemma June Howell - nation.cymru July 2024
https://nation.cymru/culture/book-review-the-crazy-truth-by-gemma-june-howell/

Sarn Helen by Tom Bullough (Modron Magazine Issue 2 March/April 2023)
https://modronmagazine.com/sophie-buchaillard-reviews-tom-bullough/