Sophie Parkin

Biography

Sophie Parkin is a writer, artist and poet. She owns an artist club in East London www.vout-o-reenees.com. Born in London. She was schooled at Frensham Heights Boarding School and Burlington school in west London, then Camborne School of Mines, Pool, near Redruth, Cornwall. She then attended Leeds Polytechnic (tutored by Jeff Nuttall), Maidstone College of Art, where she graduated with a Fine Art degree in 1982.

Sophie starred in many commercials as a girl, as varied as Wall's sausages, Comfort fabric conditioner and as the Dulux girl. She also modelled in Nova magazine and The Sunday Times and appeared in Andrew Logan’s Alternative Miss World in 1979. She has appeared in film recently, such as the Dylan Thomas biopic The Edge of Love, directed by John Maybury and starring Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller and Matthew Rhys.

She has also regularly written for British newspapers and periodicals, and appeared on television and radio as a broadcaster – most recently on Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4. She writes regularly for 3:AM Magazine.

Her novels are All Grown Up (1998), Take Me Home (1999) and Dear Goddess (2000). She has also written the teen novels French for Kissing (2005), Best of Friends (2006), and Mad, Rich and Famous (2006). Other writings by her appear in Mothers by Daughters, Sons and Mothers (both published by Virago), Girls Just Want To Have Fun: the Cosmopolitan book of short stories, Best of Friends and POT 05 - Anthology of Poetry (ed. Michael Horovitz). In 2013, she published a history of Soho's The Colony Room. She also teaches creative writing at Morley College, London.

She is the daughter of the artist Molly Parkin and art dealer Michael Parkin.