work & research experience

Alongside my writing, I have extensive experience as a freelance editor, at publications such as Lithium Magazine, Adolescent.net, The Swarthmore Review, and others. I’ve worked at numerous publications—both digital and print—in almost every standard editorial position (including copy-editing, proofreading, layout, etc) and was an Editorial Assistant for Jacket2, the Kelly Writers House’ acclaimed poetry magazine. I was also the Editorial Head of Penn’s only sex and sexuality (print) publication, Quake Magazine, and the former Editor-in-Chief of Penn’s Hot Knife Magazine, a music-focused lit mag.

I’ve also worked as a director and producer for several theatrical productions, including co-directing the first workshop production of surrealist painter/writer Leonora Carrington’s play Opus Sinestrus with Ricardo Bracho at the ICA in Philly, as well as writing & directing my own play, I Know the End, about LA girlhood and monsters, produced (in April 2023) by Ricardo Bracho, co-sponsored by the UPenn Program for Gender & Sexuality Studies and the Rotunda, with funding provided by the Playwriting Award as well as the Sachs Foundation.

I have also served as a consultant for various screenplays and script development for different writers and companies (such as the Malala Foundation). I’ve worked as an independent tutor for English, history, reading, and essay-writing (high school & college level) as well as assisting with college admissions essays (and the application process).

Adroit Journal Semi-Finalist for Prose Award, 2022

2022 Creative Ventures Grant Recipient (Kelly Writers House) for a multimedia project on horror films & girlhood studies.

2022 Summer Terry B. Heled Travel & Research Grant     

2020 Swarthmore College Susan Snyder Prize for Best Critical Essay by a 1st-Year Student, for “Trauma-Time: Emptiness as Witness in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric”

2019 Sonora Review Prize for Nonfiction, for “Anatomy of a Girl-Poet” (a very queer, very macabre essay)

Sofia Sears (they/them)—who goes by Sof most of the time—is a writer from Los Angeles. 

Their work spans genres (creative nonfiction, fiction, horror, dramatic writing, poetry) and has been published widely since they were a teenager (rip RookieMag <3), featured in publications such as Diagram, Waxwing, The Sonora Review, The LA Times, Driftwood Press, Rookie, and others. They are currently an MFA/MA candidate in Fiction and English in the Litowitz Graduate Program at Northwestern University and plan to pursue a PhD.

They hold a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, where they studied English and Gender Studies, and graduated with Honors distinctions in both of their majors, completing 2 honors theses (digital humanities/experimental critical-creative work on the underrated narratological genius of Shirley Jackson’s novel Hangsaman) that both won their respective departmental thesis awards. They worked for 2+ years as an Editorial Assistant for, and general staff member of, the Kelly Writers House. 

Their original (very experimental, very weird) 1-act play about Los Angeles/Chicana girlhood/murdered women, entitled I Know the End after the (perfect) Phoebe Bridgers song, received a workshop production in Philly with generous funding and sponsorship from the Sachs Art Grant, the Rotunda, and the GSWS Department at UPenn, and also won a playwriting award from Penn. Their work has received numerous accolades including the Sonora Review Nonfiction Prize and several awards from the Penn Creative Writing Department. They primarily write about/around: girlhood(s), horror, monstrosity and monster theory, queer stuff, sex and desire, literature, gender unease and trauma—fun stuff!

accolades & kind words

2024 Solstice Fiction Award for “Baby Teeth” 

2023 Carroll Smith-Rosenberg Senior Thesis Award in Women’s Studies — awarded by the UPenn Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies for my senior GSWS thesis, “Hangsawoman,” a multimedia, critical-creative, digital project inspired by/paying homage to Shirley Jackson’s (brilliant & very misunderstood!) novel Hangsaman. This project is about girlhood, trauma, the archetype of the “missing white girl,” disidentifications (a la Muñoz), Laura Palmer, gender-unease, auto-theory, intertextuality and murder….and much more (ft Ethel Cain <3).

UPenn Creative Writing Department Awards

• 2023 College Alumni Society Poetry Prize, 1st Place: Contest judge Syd Zolf writes: Sears makes stunning word pictures of the wonders and horrors of girlhood. While their quintessential queer monster may be “rusting & yawning under the bed,” Sears keeps “gutting the scenes around us like fish” and “laughing at the mess” along the way. “The girl goes home before the movie ends” but we still feel her presence long after, a silhouette, a trace, a green taste of violence. That’s the sign of a good poem.

• 2022 Phi Kappa Sigma Fiction Prize, 1st place: Contest judge Weike Wang writes: A thrilling, heart-wrenching, heart-pounding story about two missing girls, told in first person plural, which is, at the best of times, one of the hardest perspectives to sustain yet is done so beautifully here. Sears is exceptional at their craft, but is also a master of tension, structure, style, and is just plain a joy to read.

• 2022 Gibson Peacock Prize for Creative Nonfiction, 1st place: Contest judge Ahmad Almallah writes: “Was there anything so real as aftermath?” This is a brave tightly woven piece about trauma and the difficult task of writing about it. The aftermath of trauma occupies the mind so completely that “no amount of writing will ever bring […]cruelty to a resolution.” And yet, the author succeeds in weaving the anxiety of survival with the anxiety of writing to produce a powerfully resonant essay.
  

• 2021 College Alumni Society Poetry Prize, 1st Place: Contest judge Syd Zolf writes: Sears has a remarkable facility with imagery, diction, the line, and “language...as point of light-stunned pressure—.” The reader viscerally feels the poet’s uncanny thoughts leaking through their body and carving into the white page, working “language as beloved blade beneath the pillow.” Sears is a real, rare talent to watch and listen to.
  

• 2021 Judy Lee Award for Dramatic Writing, 1st place: Contest judge Brooke O'Harra writes: This one-act play packs a punch. The work has an explosive and dynamic quality. The performance piece calls attention to what Sears names as the violences and transcendences of girlhood. Set in LA and considered through archetypes culled and formed from the writer's own Latinx roots, this work is powerful and exciting. One can imagine this work alive on a stage. The language is beautiful and full. The writer is also very clear about they imagine this play/performance to be performed.