Sonya Moor

French and British writer of short fiction

Sonya Moor writes, reads and translates short fiction. She has a B.A. in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art and an M.A. in Creative Writing from Manchester Metropolitan University. She is researching word–image relations as a PhD candidate at Manchester Metropolitan University. She lives and works in Paris.

Publications

The Crib and Other Stories

by Albertine Sarrazin, trans. Sonya Moor | published by Confingo | order here

Albertine Sarrazin (1937–1967) spent eight years of her short life in prison. There, she wrote her novels The Runaway and Astragal, transforming into fiction her experiences of abandonment and delinquency, incarceration and escape, and love for her soulmate Julien.

This collection of short stories was composed for the most part in prison, before Sarrazin’s novels were published to international acclaim, in 1965. Here, Sarrazin turns her singular eye on the prison environment, charting the cruelties, small kindnesses, constraints and paradoxical freedoms of daily life in prison.

By turns astute, tender and wryly humorous, Sarrazin presents a panorama ranging from the dangers of ‘favours’ and clandestine letters, to the delights of illicit coffee and self-imposed creative limits. Sarrazin’s stories swoop the quotidian into the epic, as officers, inmates, and alter-egos play out, in the small world of the prison, their comédie humaine.

Against this backdrop emerges Sarrazin’s own personal battle: to be, and express, herself.

The Crib and Other Stories by Albertine Sarrazin, translated by Sonya Moor, published by Confingo cover

The Comet and Other Stories

published by Confingo | order here

A circus performer dreams a life more ordinary. An artist’s model steps out of pose. An international stateswoman lets down her hair. And a young mother nurtures bloodlust.

The female protagonists of these short stories emerge from master artworks, newsreels, mother-in-law jokes, music videos… Whether setting out from Greenwich Village backstreets, Paris pavements or Home Counties lawns they make their choices, weighing risk against opportunity, as they set about the messy business of becoming themselves.

By turns tender, playful, provocative and poignant, these are stories of people ready to disrupt, subvert, reinvent and transcend the boundaries of their worlds.