Jessica Soffer is Manhattan’s handiest superintendent; she’ll fix your clogged sink, your busted oven, and even the parts of your manuscript that just won’t work.
Twenty-six-year-old Soffer published her debut novel, Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots, with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt this May. She lives and writes in the penthouse of the SoHo building that she manages, and that her father, Iraqi sculptor Sasson Soffer, acquired as studio space in the 1970s.
“My Mom and I would come here when I was little,” she told HENRY, “to visit Dad when he was working late.” His tubular sculptures command the apartment, and although the past decades have refined both the neighborhood and decor of the loft, Soffer carries forward her father’s legacy, hewing powerful forms out of words rather than steel.
From a rope-swing beside her desk―another heirloom of her Dad’s―Soffer reads a passage from Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots in which 14-year-old self-harmer Lorca confronts her mother, and then herself.
Video Editor: Justin Gonçalves
Cinematography: Daphnee Denis
