The Life and Death of Sophie Stark

Winner of the 2016 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction

Who is Sophie Stark? A brilliant filmmaker, a lover, a wife, a friend, a traitor. A troubled misfit who becomes a star, at great cost to the people who love her and, ultimately, to herself. Gripping and provocative, The Life and Death of Sophie Stark is a story of the power of art to transform lives and to destroy them, and of an artist s drive to create something greater than herself, even if it means sacrificing everything and everyone she loves."

"Powerful...This provocative book by North, a staff editor at The New York Times, illustrates just how far an artist will go in pursuit of authentic expression...North's prose is as skillful as her protagonist's shot list. Filled with 'the sad fumbling of human love, ' Sophie's story examines the relationship between art and suffering." — Sarah Ferguson, The New York Times Book Review

"Last month I bragged about having purchased The Life and Death of Sophie Stark and now I can brag about having finished it. This book is deceptively simple — what seems like a collection of loose and easy interwoven recollections is actually thriller-paced, with mysteries revealed at every turn. The great mystery at the center is Sophie Stark, a totally unforgettable female antihero who conforms to absolutely none of our expectations and suffers deeply for it." — Lena Dunham

"A fierce, page-turning, exposé of a would-be/could-be bright star. 'Friends, ' former flames, and critics paint a portrait of an elusive cult filmmaker and the bridges she burned along the way." — Marie Claire

Anna North is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and her writing has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, The Atlantic, Glimmer Train, Nautilus, and Salon; on Jezebel and BuzzFeed; and in the New York Times, where she is a staff editor. The author of America Pacifica, she lives in Brooklyn, New York.