Short bio

So Mayer is a writer, publisher, bookseller, organiser and film curator. Their first collection of short stories Truth and Dare is out now from Cipher Press, and was long listed for the 2024 Republic of Consciousness Prize. Their recent books include A Nazi Word for a Nazi Thing, a book-length essay on queer films, bodies and fascism for Peninsula Press, and their most recent collaborative projects are Space Crone by Ursula K. Le Guin (Silver Press), The Film We Can’t See (BBC Sounds), Unreal Sex (Cipher Press), and Mothers of Invention: Film, Media and Caregiving Labor. So works with Silver Press, Burley Fisher Books and queer feminist film curation collective Club Des Femmes. 🐦@Such_Mayer.

Full bio

So Mayer is a writer, bookseller, organiser and film curator, currently based in London, UK. Their first collection of short stories Truth & Dare is out now from Cipher Press. They write poetry, fiction, essays on film and culture, and creative non-fiction, often at the same time and in a single piece: for example, in their short story ‘Dune Elegies’, which was shortlisted for the Dinesh Allirajah Short Story Award 2023. They can be found selling books at Burley Fisher Books (Best Independent Bookstore, London, 2020 and 2021), hosting events in cinemas with queer feminist film curation collective Club Des Femmes, and writing for Frieze, Criterion, and their newsletter Disturbing Words.

With their collaborators, they have co-hosted the podcasts Hell is For Hyphenates and Burley Fisher’s Isolation Station, and programmed film and literature events including BFDay23, BFDay21, and Revolt, She Said: Women and Film After ’68. So is on the board of LUX, and co-chair, with Preti Taneja, of English PEN‘s Translation Advocacy Group.

So is the author, most recently, of A Nazi Word for a Nazi Thing, a book-length essay on queer films, bodies and fascism for Peninsula Press, and of the poetry chapbook <jacked a kaddish> for Litmus Publishing. Previous publications include (O) (Arc, 2015), Political Animals: The New Feminist Cinema (IB Tauris, 2015), and The Cinema of Sally Potter: A Politics of Love (Wallflower, 2009).

Recent collaborative projects include: Space Crone by Ursula K. Le Guin (Silver Press), the first-ever collection of Le Guin’s writing on feminisms and gender; The Film We Can’t See, a six-part BBC Sounds podcast about queer films, bodies and censorship; co-editing, with Adam Zmith, Unreal Sex, a queer SFFH erotica anthology for Cipher Press; and co-editing, with Corinn Columpar, Mothers of Invention: Film, Media and Caregiving Labor.

Recent contributions to anthologies include: ‘ish’ (essay), What the Water Gave Us (Takeaway/Lucy Writers); ‘In Space’ (fiction), Riptide 15;  ‘Carapace’ (poem), Altered States (Ignota); ‘Over’ (poem), On Relationships (3ofCups); ‘Ah! to fleet / Never fleets móre’ (essay), At the Pond (Daunt); ‘The Broken Open’ (introduction), Spells: 21st Century Occult Poetry (Ignota); ‘Palaver’ (poem), Trans Love (JKP).

They have contributed essays to DVDs including: Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma), Dick Johnson is Dead (Kirsten Johnson), Working Girls (Lizzie Borden), The Complete Films of Agnès Varda, Mayak/The Lighthouse (Maria Saakyan), Gaea Girls / Shinjuku Boys (Kim Longinotto and Jano Williams), and to several BFI DVD & Bluray releases, including: Mädchen in Uniform (Leontine Sagan), Yentl (Barbra Streisand), Friendship’s Death (Peter Wollen), Varda par Agnès (Agnès Varda), Blue Black Permanent (Margaret Tait), The Gold Diggers / Thriller (Sally Potter), and Riddles of the Sphinx / Penthesilea (Laura Muvley and Peter Wollen).