February 22, 2018

Monster Portraits


















Sofia and her brother, Del, have created a book entitled Monster Portraits, now out from Rose Metal Press. For as long as I've known him, Del has drawn hybrid creatures of one kind or another, and in my mind's eye he's always curled on a sofa with his battered black sketchbook. For this work, Sofia riffed off of images Del created, using the persona of an investigating journalist to explore the concept of monsters. The pieces feel like prose poems, and are both personal and resonant, gathering notions of monsters from multiple writers.

The book has already received stellar reviews from the New York Times ("Reading this was like wandering out of a dream and into an awareness of something with claws sitting on my chest") and the Chicago Review of Books, and starred reviews from Library Journal and Booklist.