NIVIAQ KORNELIUSSEN (born in 1990) grew up in Nanortalik, a small town in Southern Greenland. She went to California in 2007 as an exchange student, obtained Greenland’s equivalent of GCSEs in Nuuk and moved to Denmark to study psychology. Because of the great success of her debut novel HOMO sapienne in 2014, she is now back in Nuuk writing and working on different cultural projects.
ROSA LIKSOM (born 1958 in Lapland, Finland) is a prize-winning writer and two-time candidate for the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize. Her books have been translated into eighteen languages. She is also a renowned painter and film-maker. She is an expert on people who live in unconventional circumstances, on the borders of cultures. With “Passing Things” (2014), Rosa Liksom returns to very short prose, a genre she pioneered and a medium in which she is still an undisputed master.
ULLA-LENA LUNDBERG is an acclaimed and prize-winning Swedish-Finnish novelist and ethnologist. She was born in 1947 on Kökar in the autonomous Åland Islands, and drew on her upbringing there in Ice, her recent and most well-known novel. Ice won the prestigious Finlandia Prize in 2012 and was nominated for the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize. It is published in the UK by Sort of Books in a translation by Thomas Teal. Ulla-Lena Lundberg is the author of more than twenty works of fiction and non-fiction. She has travelled extensively, and has lived and worked in the USA, the UK, Japan, Africa and Siberia. She currently lives in Mariehamn, the only town in Åland. Her face has recently appeared on an Åland island stamp.
SÓLRÚN MICHELSEN (born 1948) made her debut in 1994 with a short-story collection for children, Argjafrensar, and has since published several books for children as well as poetry and other short-story collections. She was awarded the Faroese Children’s Literature Award in 2002. In 2004 she published her first novel for adults, Tema við slankum, for which she was awarded the Faroese M.A. Jacobsen Literature Prize; it has been published in Denmark, Norway and Germany. Her latest novel, Hinumegin er mars, from 2013, is a gripping novel about a woman caring for her elderly mother who has dementia. The novel was nominated for the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize in 2015 and was published in Denmark in February 2017.
MADAME NIELSEN is a Danish novelist, artist, performer, stage director and world history enactor; she is also a composer and chanteuse. She is the author of numerous literary works, including her novel trilogy, The Suicide Mission (2005), The Sovereign (2008), Fall of the Great Satan (2012), and most recently The Endless Summer (2014), the “Bildungsroman” The Invasion (2016) and The Supreme Being (2017). Her work has been translated into nine languages and has received several literary prizes. The autobiographical novel My Encounters with the Great Authors of Our Nation was published in 2013 under the name Claus Beck-Nielsen and was nominated for the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize in 2014.
DORTHE NORS was born in 1970 and is one of the most original voices in contemporary Danish literature. She holds a degree in literature and art history from Aarhus University and has published four novels so far, in addition to a short-story collection, Karate Chop, and a novella, Minna Needs Rehearsal Space. Nors’ short stories have appeared in numerous publications, including Harper’s Magazine and the Boston Review, and she is the first Danish writer ever to have a story published in the New Yorker. In 2014, Karate Chop won the prestigious P.O. Enquist Literary Prize. Karate Chop and Minna Needs Rehearsal Space are both published by Pushkin Press.
KRISTÍN ÓMARSDÓTTIR was born in Reykjavík in 1962. Her debut work in 1987 was a play; and in the same year her first book of poetry was published. She has written novels, poems, short stories and plays, and in 2009 she won the literary prize Fjöruverðlaunin for her book of poetry Sjáðu fegurð þína. She received the “Griman”, the Icelandic prize for best playwright of the year for her play Segðu mér allt in 2005. Three of her novels have been nominated for the Íslensku bókmenntaverðlaunin prize, and one, Elskan mín ég dey (1997), was nominated for the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize. Her work has been published in Denmark, Sweden, the USA, France and the UK. She lives in Reykjavík.
SIGBJØRN SKÅDEN (born 1976) is a Saami-Norwegian writer from Skånland in North Norway. He writes in both Saami and Norwegian and made his debut in 2004 with the poetry collection Skuovvadeddjiid gonagas (The King of Shoemakers) which was nominated for the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize. He has since published a second collection of poetry, a children’s book and two novels, in addition to numerous works written for the stage or installation art projects. He was awarded the Young Artist of the Year Award at indigenous art festival Riddu Riđđu, has been the prologue writer for the Arctic Arts Festival and a keynote speaker at the indigenous forum of the Medellín Poetry Festival, Colombia. His latest book, the novel Våke over dem som sover (Watch over Those Who Sleep), was nominated for the Norwegian Broadaster’s Listeners’ Award and received the Havmann Award for best book by a North Norwegian writer.
SØRINES TEENHOLDT was born in 1986 and grew up in Paamiut, Greenland. She had a rather difficult childhood, which continues to influence her writing today. In 2012 she won a short-story competition that made her want to keep writing, and in 2015 her short-story collection Zombieland was published. She now lives in Nuuk with her daughter; she is engaged in many cultural projects and continues to write.
Copyright Acknowledgements
“Sunday” by Naja Marie Aidt (translated by Denise Newman); first published in English in Baboon by Two Lines Press, San Francisco, California, 2014, © Naja Marie Aidt, 2014; English translation © Denise Newman, 2014
“The Dogs of Thessaloniki” by Kjell Askildsen (translated by Seán Kinsella); first appeared as “Hundene i Tessaloniki” in the collection Hundene i Tessaloniki by Kjell Askildsen, © Forlaget Oktober/Kjell Askildsen, 1996; first published in English in Selected Stories by Kjell Askildsen by Dalkey Archive Press, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, 2014, © Forlaget Oktober, 2014; English translation copyright © Seán Kinsella, 2013. Published by agreement with Oslo Literary Agency
“The Dark Blue Winter Overcoat” by Johan Bargum (translated by Sarah Pollard); first published in the Lampeter Translation series (no. 5) by St David’s University College, Lampeter, Wales, © Johan Bargum, 1992
“Avocado” by Guðbergur Bergsson (translated by Brian FitzGibbon); English translation first published by Pushkin Press, 2017, © Brian FitzGibbon, 2017. Published by agreement with Guðbergur Bergsson
“Don’t kill me, I beg you. This is my tree” by Hassan Blasim (translated by Jonathan Wright); first published in English in The Guardian in March 2013; published by Pushkin Press, 2017, © Hassan Blasim, 2013, 2017
“The Man in the Boat” by Per Olov Enquist (translated by Deborah Bragan-Turner); originally published as Mannen i båten © Per Olov Enquist, Sweden, 1969. English translation first published by Pushkin Press, 2017, © Deborah Bragan-Turner, 2017. Published by agreement with Norstedts Agency