Sophie Powell was born in 1980, and split her time growing up between London and a sheep farm in the Brecon Beacons in Wales. She graduated in Classics from Trinity College, Cambridge University, where she was a junior scholar, and has an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from New York University, where she had a fellowship.

She is the author of the novel The Mushroom Man (Putnam Penguin) which received glowing reviews, including one from the New York Times Book Review, and which has been translated into several languages. She has also published short stories and journalism. Most recently she wrote a piece on Oman for Town and Country Travel, as well as a series of blogs for the online magazine Words Without Borders that promotes literature in translation (a partner of PEN American Center and The Center for Literature and Translation at Columbia University).

Sophie lives in Boston with her husband, Christian Westra. Sophie is represented by Faye Bender at the Faye Bender Literary Agency in New York.