“The Last Sophia” by C.S.E. Cooney will be appearing in Prime’s forthcoming Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy: 2012 edited by Rich Horton. T.J. McIntyre interviews Cooney on the story.

“The Last Sophia” alternates between a first person narrative and letters. What inspired you to use this format?

Well, I love epistolary stories. I can’t help myself. If a letter is kind of like an act of complicit voyeurism and reading like that of telepathy, I think an epistolary story satisfies our human appetite both for the amazing mysteries of mentalism and for plain old vice. Also, structurally, alternating letters with stream of consciousness was a way to differentiate between the protagonist’s lucid moments and her febrile ones. Then again, she’s not–as she’d be the first to tell you–the world’s most reliable narrator. Was she ever really writing letters, or just dreaming them? Is she thinking her thoughts or speaking them aloud? Who can say? No one. Except, perhaps, the last Sophia.

MORE: Read the entire interview here!