Hello fellow sociological fiction enthusiasts,
I’m excited to share the fourteenth So Fi Zine. Fittingly, this edition features 14 excellent new works of sociological fiction, poetry and visual art by 12 contributors:
Can I Ever Know Your Totality?, John-Paul Smiley
Re: Ethics Application…, Holly Sutherland
Empty, Caroline Lenette
What a Mouse Knows, Maisie Tomlinson
Trauma Informed Response, Sharon Attipoe-Dorcoo
Sunday School, JE Sumerau
Stamp Out Racism, Aish Ravi
Before/After, Ian C Smith
Stolen, Alistair McCulloch
Intimately Dying, Caroline Lenette
On the Weight of a Caste Bag, Bilal X
“when you’re feeling better, please could you send me an email…”, Holly Sutherland
Seal of Approval, Helen Kara
Chips Out, Rémy-Paulin Twahirwa
As I say in my editorial for this edition, it really does feel like there has been a huge groundswell of interest in creative social inquiry this year. I have attended more workshops than ever (at least 15!), many on creative writing and zinemaking, and others on a whole host of other approaches — including tarot, photography, data visualisation, Virtual Reality, and generative AI. In different ways, these events have made me think carefully and critically about representation. This is something I reflected on in an earlier editorial of So Fi Zine, but the diverse modalities I’ve dipped my toe into this year have revived and opened new questions about how and why we work to make representations.
Howard Becker’s passing has also made me think about this again. Howie penned the Editorial for So Fi Zine #2, back in 2017. His enthusiasm for this project and his promise to be involved was the thing that made So Fi Zine more than a one-off. His work has always meant a great deal to me and I read a number of his books again after he passed. They are brilliant, clear-eyed, fresh, and committed to the craft of sociology. I had the privilege of talking about Becker’s legacy as the closing keynote for TASA this year. The impact of Becker’s ideas are so material in this zine and continue to drive much of the research I do.
A slew of new short stories have also been published in The Sociological Review during the past few months. You can find all of these linked here:
Submissions for So Fi Zine will open again in 2024. Submissions for The Sociological Review are always open (but I am on holidays until February, so they are effectively on hiatus until I get back to my desk).