Sophie Kemp’s reading list for electric and hilarious prose

These six unrelenting and effervescent titles inspired the writer as she worked on her debut novel ‘Paradise Logic’ “This is my novel, it’s about a girl named Reality.” Writer Sophie Kemp smiles into a microphone at KGB bar wearing a Vaquera slip dress with white lace panties sewn onto the outside. She’s electric, forever in on the joke, crafting a world of vibrant iconoclasm in real time. It’s a far cry from her bylines in the glossy pages of Vogue or GQ —unless you look closer. Kemp’s short fiction and personal essays fizz and bubble across Granta , The Paris Review , and The Baffler with an infectiously effervescent voice—and killer prose. Paradise Logic , Kemp’s debut novel will be published by Simon and Schuster in March 2025, takes this bright agility into an experimental place; a delicious playplace between the world of the felt and, well, Reality. For Kemp, the openness of language is just an example of the social awkwardness of womanhood, a fact that’s maybe what motivated writer Jen George to call her “The 21st Century heir apparent to Kathy Acker.” Acker’s Don Quixote is just one of the six delicious titles Kemp nominates for a personal canon of good prose, the kind of work whose music motivates its meaning, opens up words like rabbit-holes, supports the delectable and devotional belief that all fiction is speculative fiction. Kemp’s ability to lend grace to ecstasy is all about sound (“prioritizing sentence acoustics over, like, plot,” she tells me in an email). It’s also what makes Paradise Logic my most highly anticipated book of next year. My Happy Life by Lydia Millet Everyone who has read this book per my recommendation has said something along the lines of “this book made me want to kill myself.” But for me, My Happy Life was a revelation. My writing teacher Ben Marcus turned me on to Millet’s writing. I was in my last few weeks of graduate school and was simultaneously finishing up a draft of my novel, Paradise Logic , to send to my agent. The ending of my […]

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