StreetMuse

I’m really proud of my story on Sophie Ward, not only is this girl a Perth native and beau­ti­ful but she’s also incred­i­bly smart. Copy­right © Spook mag­a­zine 2010

Sophie Ward

Words Dani Hanrahan

Sophie Ward made a name for her­self as one of Australia’s most cel­e­brated mod­els (and yes, sis­ter to Gemma Ward) but she’s left that world behind. Now based in New York, Sophie exchanged her heels for a new jour­ney, one with a pad, a pen and a curi­ous long­ing to explore.

The Perth born model-turned-writer is a mix of beauty and brains, at once both intro­spec­tive and open. After being dis­cov­ered in the crowd at the Search for a Super­model audi­tions, Sophie was pro­pelled into a world where peo­ple wanted to know you, but not get to know you. See­ing her younger sis­ter (Gemma) have to deal with the onslaught of sud­den fame, Sophie decided the fash­ion world wasn’t for her. But it did show her “…some really beau­ti­ful parts of myself and some really ugly parts too.”

With her big blue eyes, alabaster com­plex­ion and lithe limbs, Sophie looks mag­i­cally oth­er­worldly (thanks mum) and it’s to these other worlds that she hopes to trans­port peo­ple, with her writ­ing as the ves­sel. “I’d like to cre­ate a feel­ing; a sen­sa­tion that draws peo­ple into the realms just beyond real­ity. That is the world of magic, and I like liv­ing there.” Grad­u­at­ing from the Uni­ver­sity of West­ern Aus­tralia in 2006, Sophie majored in Eng­lish and Euro­pean Stud­ies. Dur­ing that time she stud­ied Descartes and Kant’s the­ory of thought – philo­soph­i­cal pur­suits that seem to breathe through her words. “Con­tem­pla­tion, melan­choly, soli­tude and obsess­ing over try­ing to artic­u­late par­tic­u­lar emo­tions. It all comes from inside – there are really only periph­eral influ­ences from out­side, and those are mainly voices like Miller’s or Rilke’s.” Her work first appeared in Mark mag­a­zine (the online haven of Grazia’s res­i­dent style king, Mark Vas­sallo) along­side Aus­tralian writ­ing roy­alty, Tim Win­ton (“I saw a future open up that I hadn’t pre­vi­ously explored or been present to) and has since writ­ten for Aus­tralian Vogue, Fol­low and Sil­ver magazine.

Hav­ing moved from Perth to Amer­ica, Sophie divides her time between New York, Los Ange­les, the French coun­try­side, Syd­ney and Perth. Like the model she was and the jour­ney­man she is now, Sophie has trav­elled exten­sively; from Eng­land to Portofino and Van­u­atu to New Orleans (where she dined on Greek mythol­ogy and Brandy Sazerac’s) but Perth is where the heart is. When she returns home, Sophie lists; dri­ving to the beach, lying out­doors in a ham­mock, pic­nick­ing at Som­merville (UWA grounds) and feast­ing on her mum’s cook­ing as the things she loves doing best.

Along with free­lance writ­ing and mus­ings on her blog, Big Long Open Gash, she is the queen of her own cas­tle, the Paper Cas­tle, that is – a small, grass­roots pub­lish­ing com­pany that Sophie founded. “I like the idea of a per­sonal space in a dig­i­tal realm that is inti­mate whilst also being uni­ver­sal.” It was a nat­ural pro­gres­sion for the small-town girl whose big ideas she believed would be sac­ri­ficed in the com­mer­cial writ­ing busi­ness. “I had the sense that the kind of writ­ing or work I wanted to do now wouldn’t be accepted by the big­ger pub­lish­ers, and that I’d have to alter or change some ele­ment of my truest expres­sion in order to work with them, and I didn’t want to make that sac­ri­fice. My pub­lisher gave me the space and the oppor­tu­nity to be heard and sup­ported before I even thought I was a writer, and so I want to give that oppor­tu­nity to other peo­ple, too. It’s a gift.” Unlike inter­na­tional pub­lish­ing houses, Sophie’s phi­los­o­phy behind her Paper king­dom is a lit­tle closer to heart. “I’d like to cre­ate beau­ti­ful books that peo­ple trea­sure as friends, for as long as this life­time per­mits.” And she’s start­ing with The Begin­ning of an Inex­plic­a­ble Jour­ney, her philo­log­i­cal mem­oir about a per­sonal human jour­ney or in her words, “a dichotomy: about life and not life, me and not me. For me this book is the best I could do to chan­nel a hugely expan­sive world into a small and suc­cinct pack­age.” Hav­ing come about whilst trav­el­ling on the lonely mod­el­ling cir­cuit, Sophie hopes read­ers are inspired by her jour­ney. “I’d like peo­ple to know that what­ever they want to express can be expressed. There is room for every­thing in this world. Even when it feels excru­ci­at­ingly tightly wound up, the expe­ri­ence of unrav­el­ling it and shar­ing it and cre­at­ing some­thing from noth­ing is quite an expe­ri­ence. You have to hon­our and trea­sure those emo­tions; they are so uni­ver­sal and so beau­ti­ful.” Sophie has an affin­ity with words, and it’s that love affair that has finally made the for­mer model finally find the per­son she wants to be. Is she con­tent with the woman she’s become? “I’m proud of the rela­tion­ships in my life, and proud of the fact that I have had dreams and accom­plished them (mov­ing to New York, becom­ing a writer, cre­at­ing Paper Cas­tle Press from noth­ing) and yet as Da Vinci said on his death bed: ‘I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the qual­ity it should have.’ It will always be a process.” A process that begins with an inex­plic­a­ble journey…