release

we're finally here, my book is coming out today x

today my book is coming out and i’m sitting on a friend’s sofa, the soft swirling of a dishwasher in the background and boy genius is singing about changes they have to make. apparently it is also my name day today, i didn’t know this when I picked the 15.05.2025 to release my book: but it all makes sense now. yesterday when i arrived in berlin, a city i left exactly six years ago, i walked into the ocelot bookshop and almost walked into myself. looking back at me was a life-sized poster, of last year sophia with her dipped-in blue hair a remembrance of another sophia, advertising for my reading tonight.

it’s a strange thing to release a book into the world, for a long time you’re just with yourself and your thoughts as if no one would ever read them and then suddenly it’s out there and you’re wondering will it come back to you?

it’s an exercise in surrender.

lisa krusche asked in her afterword for my book: “I ponder how to write an afterword. How to write an afterword, when this text, with its openness and focus, with its cleverly interwoven layers and motifs, offers so many threads to examine?

I could write: This is a book about the life of an artist.
I could write: This is a book about the struggle to gain and maintain independence, which also means creating space for one’s own art and its eccentricities .
I could write: This is a book about class and how, as a material reality, it shapes every aspect of life—whether that’s in the literary scene or in regard to mental health.
I could write: This is a book about an obsession with one’s hairline.
I could write: This is a book about what it means to be a daughter to a mother—both in the specific and in the broad, symbolic sense.
I could write: This is a book about the transformative power of writing.
I could write: This is a book that contains the best birthday party theme of all time, and for that reason alone, you should all read it.
I could write: This is definitely a book about change—about the fear of it, but also about the fear that it actually won’t happen, about stagnation.
I could write: This is a book whose motifs are chosen in a way that makes them layered and shimmering, so that, for example, the obsession with a hairline becomes a symbol of these very fears— which is perhaps even saying something about the fear of aging, about femininity, and about the mother-daughter relationship.
I could also write: This is a book that made me throw out most of my underwear and feverishly question what other hygienic blind spots I might have.

All of this would be true, and at the same time, I would have to accept everything I haven’t mentioned—everything that will remain unsaid in this afterword.”

nothing that can be done now but wait. i tell myself.

release. surrender. and hope for the best.

Things That Are Different Now is out today. You can order a copy here.