Sophie Buchaillard is a writer-poet, a grower, and a well-being facilitator who believes in the power of writing to change lives and foster strong communities for the future. She has written two novels, a dozen essays about migration, motherhood and movement; and recently a poetry pamphlet on overcoming trauma. She was a Bridport Poetry Prize and Wales Book of the Year finalist in 2024 and 2023 respectively. Sophie splits her time between facilitating creative writing in her community; observing the journey of the food she grows, from seed to table; and subverting form to re-imagine tomorrow, preferably in conversation and collaboration with other creative dreamers.
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 for 25 years.
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) and written extensively about the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda. 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 where she taught until February 2024. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and serves as Associate Tutor (like a substitute teacher for uni!) at Cardiff Metropolitan University.
Her research focuses on the problematic past of travel writing, its impact on our sense of identity today, and how the genre can be subverted to contribute to contemporary debates and give a voice to the silenced.
Sophie was a Hay Festival Writer at Work in 2023. This inspired her to explore freeform poetry alongside working on her third novel and on a non-fiction project marrying writing and well-being. She was a finalist in the International Bridport Poetry Prize 2024 and her debut collection Painting Over the Cracks is out 15th of October with Lucent Dreaming.
Sophie has been a counsellor, an academic and a campaigner for women’s parity, migrant rights, and for the need to reset our approach to nature with humility and grace. She is an advocate of identité-mosaïque (TM): a gentle, compassionate approach to embracing our own, unique sense of self and belonging, away from rigid national lines and ‘culture wars’. Our identité-mosaïque is enriched by the cultures we inherit, those we traverse, and those we choose, in a spirit of sharing and mutual understanding - like a conversation amongst new and old friends sharing a home cooked meal.
Poetry pamphlet
Painting over the cracks
Lucent Dreaming / 15 October 2025
Inspired by her life, Painting Over the Cracks is Sophie’s poetry debut. The pamphlet explores the healing power of expression, friendship, and community in overcoming trauma.
Split into four chronological sections, the pamphlet travels from the anxieties of a single mother to emerging memories of buried traumas, and unpicks how unspoken shame has a way to colour every interaction, fraying family ties, and making it hard to fully engage with the world.
Poetry, here, becomes a means of articulating the unspoken, claiming back a sense of community, and recognising the strength that comes from friendship without judgment.
New essay coming up
Folding Rock Issue 2: Speak to Me
Out 10th of July 2025
Sophie’s upcoming essay ‘Small Expectations’ is included in Speak to Me, Folding Rock’s second issue on Language. It offers a reflection on her own journey from an undiagnosed condition to becoming a writer, and the process of translation which made it possible.
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.
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.
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.
An Open Door: New Travel Writing for a Precarious Century
Parthian Books
Edited by Steven Lovatt
Woman’s Wales?
Parthian Books
Edited by Emma Schofield
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
10 April 2025: Launch of Meredith Miller’s new novel Cold Grace, hosted by Sophie Buchaillard and the Swansea Cultural Institute.
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
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/
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/