Sophie Percival

3 weeks ago | nbmagazine.co.uk | Sophie Percival

I wanted to start with a question about process because Gunk is your first novel and your last book, Send Nudes, was a short story collection, so I’d love to know whether your writing process changed at all? And were there any challenges when moving from short story to novel? I think I approached Gunk like I would have approached a short story, and I wonder now if that was a maybe just naive of me. I started writing and I just kept going and, even with a short story, I would do the same thing.

1 month ago | nbmagazine.co.uk | Sophie Percival

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer our questions, and we’re so happy to feature Luminous as our Book of the Month!First of all, I’d love to know how you found the experience of writing Luminous. What did you learn about your writing process, and did it change at all over time? Luminous began as a children’s book: a ragtag bunch of kids discover a robot named Yoyo in a junkyard. He looks like a twelve-year-old boy, but turns out to be so much more.

2 months ago | nbmagazine.co.uk | Sophie Percival

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer our questions! We loved Idle Grounds so much and are so happy to be promoting it to our readers. (That’s so lovely to hear—thank you!)First of all, I’d love to know more about the process of writing Idle Grounds. Where did your initial idea come from? And how does it feel to be a debut novelist? Idle Grounds is based on my childhood in New England, so it’s very much a write what you know kind of thing.

2 months ago | nbmagazine.co.uk | Isobel Edmondson |Sophie Percival

What are you most excited about when it comes to the launch of your new book: We Need Your Art? I'm excited for We Need Your Art to go out there and start changing people's lives. For my book baby to go have a life of her own, inspiring people to create, taking care of artists who are hurting, gently nudging people back to their art. This lead up has been so intense, and I have championed this book with my whole heart. It is time for the book to start working her magic.

Mar 19, 2025 | nbmagazine.co.uk | Kaya Purchase |Sophie Percival

Firstly, I want to congratulate you on the novel. It’s such an important piece of work in terms of how it grapples with ecological themes and the human experience. It feels like the most accurate representation of climate anxiety at this specific point in history that I’ve read. This is a novel about grief and confronting the truth of mortality, but the narrator’s personal experiences of grief serve as a microcosm for the collective grief we all feel right now for a collapsing planet.