Matilda Battersby is editor of Popshot magazine – an illustrated literary magazine that publishes short stories, flash fiction, and poetry from the literary new blood. The magazine is published quarterly.
Popshot is published by The Chelsea Magazine Company, which is led by an energetic and experienced team with offices in the United Kingdom and North America.
What was the last book you read?
Sally Rooney’s Normal People.
How did you buy it?
I bought a copy at Waterstones for my friend. I gave it to her for Christmas and selfishly asked if I could borrow it afterwards. She demurred and I couldn’t wait any longer, so I went to my local book shop and bought it and devoured it in three sittings.
What’s next on your reading list?
Tin Man by Sarah Winman.
Which writer would you have loved to have met and why?
Emily Dickinson. Because by all accounts she lived so quietly but her poetry is full of passion and pain and unspent emotion — I want to unravel the mystery of its source.
What TV series are you obsessing over right now?
Slightly embarrassingly, the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. It’s much scarier than the Nineties TV series and quite funny.
What three books would you want with you on a desert island?
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott, because I have lots of sisters and reading it feels comforting. I’d also bring The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (it’s basically five books in one, anyway) and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.
Tell us what you do in 20 words.
I choose new writing for inclusion in a beautiful quarterly magazine, working with illustrators to bring those stories to life visually.
What do you like about your job?
Reading lots of new short stories, flash fiction and poetry. Almost half of my work for Popshot is reading — which is my favourite thing.
Go on, let us know your musical guilty pleasure.
Hamilton
Which great novel have you tried to read but failed?
Bleak House by Charles Dickens.
Popshot magazine will feature in our Poetry Collective at The London Book Fair 2019.