Sad Sack

Book excerpt: Sad Sack' is a book of collected writing by Sophia Al-Maria, taking feminist inspiration from Ursula K. Le Guin?s 1986 essay 'The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction'; opposing "the linear, progressive, Time?s-(killing)-arrow mode of the Techno-Heroic." Encompassing more than a decade of work, 'Sad Sack' tracks Al-Maria?s speculative journey as a writer, from the first seed of her "premature" memoir, through the coining and subsequent critique of "Gulf Futurism", towards experiments in gathering, containing, welling up and sucking dry.0Sophia Al-Maria was Whitechapel Gallery?s Writer in Residence 2018 ? her exhibition ?BCE? (Whitechapel Gallery, January ? April 2019), draws on a year of performances and readings, culminating in two short creation myth films: one from the ancient past, originating with the Wayuu tribe in northern Colombia; the other from the distant future, made with Victoria Sin.0.