Sophie, Autumn 2026
SOPHIE PATTISON is such a lovely person. Warm, kind, amazingly positive. She works as a freelance sound technician for literary festivals. She is a massive reader and was recently forced to move house. She is bracingly lonely.* So much so, the absence of others feels like a physical weight, if that makes sense.
But then Sophie discovers an author through work and comes to adore her. Her books, interviews and podcasts, her wisdom and brilliance, her beautiful words. It’s like solace and company. It’s almost like love. And Sophie would love to meet her, although she never will, obviously. The author would never come to her festival. She’s too famous for that. Too brilliant, too beautiful. And in a way, thank goodness, because that would change everything. But ... what if she did?
* although she has a best friend called Emma, and an amazing brother. And a husband. But a number of things happened there.
Published in Australia, July 28. UK, August 27. US, September 8
‘Heartwarming, tender and so funny, Sophie, Standing There is a wonderful, bittersweet story of what it means to be truly, achingly lonely. I loved it.’
GILLIAN ANDERSON
‘Sophie, Standing There is a moving examination of what it means to be alone in the world, and what it means to find connection. It is, by turns, heartbreaking, hilarious, and deeply hopeful. Meg Mason is a dazzling talent.’
ANN PATCHETT, author of The Dutch House
‘So smart, so funny, so moving—Mason has done it again—this time using the behind the scenes mechanics at a literary festival to reveal the complexity of loneliness and how one woman attempts to dig herself out. I absolutely loved it.’
BONNIE GARMUS, author of Lessons in Chemistry
'Truly inspired and original'
ESTHER FREUD, author of My Sister and Other Lovers
‘Sophie, Standing There unfolds like a strange origami crane in reverse--so achingly tender and so brilliantly subtle that I could never put it down. The loneliness of our inner world and the quiet movement towards connection--nobody evokes it as breathtakingly as Meg Mason. And by "it," I guess I mean simply being a person. Dazzling.’
CATHERINE NEWMAN, author of Sandwich
‘I loved Sophie, and I love Meg Mason's brain and the strange, wonderful, funny stories she gives us.’
ANN NEPOLITANO, author of Hello Beautiful