Authors
Arild Stubhaug
Arild Stubhaug is a writer of fiction and biography, and a recipient of a government grant, with an honorary doctorate from Oslo University. He has written several biographies, including Niels Henrik Abel and his Times: Called Too Soon by Flames Afar (winner of Norway’s prestigious Brage Prize) and Jacob Aall in his Time. He has won numerous awards including the Norwegian Language Council Prize, the Norwegian Academy Prize and the Dobloug Prize awarded by the Swedish Academy.
Aslak Nore
Aslak Nore (b. 1978) grew up in Oslo. He was educated at the University of Oslo and the New School for Social Research in New York and has served in Norway’s elite Telemark Battalion in Bosnia. A modern-day adventurer, Nore has lived in Latin America and worked as a journalist in the Middle East and Afghanistan. He has published several non-fiction books and four novels. Wolfsangel (2017) was a national bestseller and won the Riverton Prize for best crime novel in Norway in 2018. The Cemetery of the Sea (2021) is the first novel in an epic literary thriller series and a huge international success and bestseller. Nore lives in Provence, France.
Bjørn Asle Nord
Bjørn Asle Nord works for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) with digital journalistic climate and nature stories and was a journalist for the newspaper Bergens Tidende for 28 years. Nord is known for both stories and investigative journalism of a very high caliber. Five Feet Under started as a successful journalistic work, a multi-award-winning article in Norway, and later published both in German and English. In 2018 it was the fifth most popular story by New York-based Narratively. Link text His previous book Gi meg heller livet. (Give me life instead. A documentary about military veterans in Norway), co-created with photographer Håvard Bjelland, was published in 2014. Nord lives in Bergen.
Bjørn Hatterud
Bjørn Hatterud is an Oslo-based writer, musician, and art curator, who grew up gay and disabled in a working-class family in a rural Norwegian community. He has experienced national success with his first two critically acclaimed books, Against Normality (2018) and Me, Mum and Mjøsa (2020). In his books, Hatterud writes about his life’s extraordinary trajectory, and about how growing up as an outsider led him to forge a pathway into art, literature and non-mainstream culture – the spaces where he discovered identity and freedom. Bjerke Tower Block is his third book, which confirms his position as one of Norway’s leading narrative non-fiction writers. He has been awarded Fritt Ords Pris (Free Speech Award) and Kritikerprisen (The National Book Critics’ Award) for his writing.
Brian Dillon
Brian Dillon was born in Dublin in 1969. His books include Essayism, The Great Explosion (shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize), Objects in This Mirror: Essays, I Am Sitting in a Room, Sanctuary, Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives (shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize) and In the Dark Room, which won the Irish Book Award for non-fiction. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, New York Times, London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, Bookforum, frieze and Artforum. He is UK editor of Cabinet magazine, and teaches Creative Writing at Queen Mary, University of London.
Dan Fox
Dan Fox is a writer, musician, and co-editor of frieze magazine, Europe’s foremost magazine of art and culture. He is based in New York. His first novel, Pretentiousness: Why it Matters, received worldwide acclaim upon its publication. Fox wrote an article for The Guardian, on the same topic, available online here.
Elisabeth Beanca Halvorsen
Halvorsen is a Norwegian writer, playwright and translator of German literature. Her latest book is Doris Lessing. A literary Pursuit (Gyldendal 2016). She lives in Oslo and Vienna.
Eskil Skjeldal
Eskil Skjeldal (b. 1974) is a theologian, author, and librarian. He has a master’s in non-fiction writing from Høgskolen i Vestfold and is a literary critic for Vårt Land and a freelance journalist for Dag og Tid.
Helle Helle
Helle Helle (b. 1965) is a graduate of the Danish Academy of Creative Writing and the author of a number of novels as well as two collections of short fiction. She is one of Scandinavia’s most original writers, with a career spanning three decades, from her debut Example of Life (1993) to her most recent novel, Hafni Says, published to rave reviews in 2023. Her books have been translated into 24 languages.
Ida Lødemel Tvedt
Ida Lødemel Tvedt (b. 1987) is an essayist based in Oslo. In 2021 she received the Arne Hestenes Award for outstanding cultural journalism. She is currently working on her second book, due to be published in Norwegian in the Spring 2022. Lødemel Tvedt holds an MFA in nonfiction from Columbia University and an MA from The New School for Social Research. She has taught classes on the literary essay at Columbia and at The New School, and she has been a guest lecturer at numerous other institutions. Lødemel Tvedt’s work has appeared in many established news journals and magazines, including Guernica, Das Magazin, Vagant, Vinduet and N+1. . You can read the recently published piece: Heimat(t), here.
Inger Bråtveit
Inger Bråtveit is one of Norway’s most exciting younger authors and the recipient of several awards and grants, including the New Norwegian Literature Prize and the Bjørnson Scholarship. She debuted as an author in 2002 with the novel Mouth Towards a Frozen Fjord. Her second novel, Siss and Unn, was nominated for the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature in 2008.
Bråtveit published her third novel Alice A4 in 2015, nominated for the Young Readers’ Critics’ Prize. The Art of Swimming (2018) is a hybrid novel applauded for its wise and beautiful prose. Starweed is her fifth novel.
Jessica Au
Jessica Au is a writer based in Melbourne. Her first novel Cargo (2011) was published by Picador and was highly commended in the Kathleen Mitchell Award for a writer under 30. She is the former deputy editor of Meanjin, and is currently an associate editor at Aeon. Cold Enough for Snow is her second novel.
The Nobel Prize
Jon Fosse
Nobel Prize-winner Jon Fosse (b. 1959), is widely considered one of the most important writers of our time. For almost forty years, he has written novels, plays, poems, stories, essays, and children’s books. His award-winning work has been translated into more than fifty languages and his plays have been staged over a thousand times all over the world.
Jon Fosse grew up in Strandebarm, a small village in the western part of Norway, he now lives in the Grotten, an honorary residence in Oslo, as well as in Hainburg, Austria, and Frekhaug, Norway.
Fosse was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2023 and has received numerous prizes, both in Norway and internationally through the years.
Kate Briggs
Kate Briggs is the translator of two Roland Barthes lecture volumes and seminar notes at the Collége de France: The Preparation of the Novel and How to Live Together, both published by Columbia University Press. She teaches at Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam.
Kjetil Røed
Kjetil Røed (1973–) is the editor of the visual art journal Billedkunst. He has published a number of reviews and essays in the Norwegian press, including the national newspapers Aftenposten and Klassekampen, as well as reviews for international art publications such as Frieze, Artreview and artforum.com. 2019 saw the publication of Røed’s books Working through the Past: Nordic Conceptual Art as a Tool for Re-thinking History (SKIRA editore, Milano) and the critically acclaimed Art & Life: A User’s Manual (Kunsten og livet. En bruksanvisning, 2019), the foreign rights of which have been acquired by a Polish publisher. In 2021 he translated Iris Murdoch’s The Sovereignty of Good (Det Godes suverenitet, Cappelen Damm) and completed the sequel to Art & Life, entitled Art & Death. A User’s Manual (Res publica, 2021).
Laila Brenden
Laila Brenden is a Norwegian author of more than 80 historical romance novels. Her book series Hannah and Mountain Roses have sold in excess of a million copies in Norway, and are published in Sweden and Poland. Brenden has also written several non-fiction books for children and adults.
Long Litt Woon
Long Litt Woon is an Anthropologist and certified Mushroom Expert in Norway. She went to Norway in her youth as an exchange student, where she met and later married a Norwegian, Eiolf Olsen. Norway became her home, and she currently resides in Oslo, Norway. The author’s surname is Long in accordance to Chinese naming tradition.
Merete Morken Andersen
Merete Morken Andersen is an associate professor of creative non-fiction at the University of Southeast Norway. She has published both fiction and creative non-fiction books. In 2002 she won the Norwegian Critics’ Prize for her novel Oceans of Time, which also was awarded the Amalie Skram Prize in 2003. Her most recent book is The Writing Book (2008).
Mette Karlsvik
Mette Karlsvik’s literary debut was in 2005 with the novel The Window in the Dining Hall Overlooks the Fjord (Vindauga i matsalen vender mot fjorden) for which she was awarded the prestigious Tarjei Vesaas debutant prize. In 2012 she received the Booksellers grant, Stig Sæterbakken’s memorial award and Skien municipality’s artist grant. The novel Being Björk (Bli Björk, 2011) was nominated for the Brage Prize. Karlsvik’s writing is characterised by a unique world-view, with a perspective ranging in scope from microscopic sensations to global issues, often expressed through a single gesture or phrase.
Olaug Nilssen
Olaug Nilssen (1977) made her literary breakthrough with Turn me on, Dammit in 2005. The book had a defining significance for an entire generation. Since then she has written books in different genres and made her mark as a unique and important voice in Norwegian literature. In her novel l A Tale of Terrible Times, for which she was awarded the Brage Prize, she writes with unusual openness about the experience of being a mother of a child with disabilities. In her novel The One Needful Thing, published in 2020, she continues to explore the themes of A Tale of Terrible Times.
In 2021, Nilssen received The Fritt Ord’s Prize, along with Bjørn Hatterud and Jan Grue. They were awarded the prize in recognition of their important critical contribution to illuminating the impact of cultural stigmas on the situation of persons with disabilities in Norway.
Her new novel Undesirable Behaviour was published in 2023.
I 2024, she received the prestigious Amalie Skram Prize for her authorship.
Ole Kristian Løyning
Ole Kristian Løyning (born in 1982) works as a teacher and has previously published two children’s books. My Friend, the Pirate has received glowing reviews and was awarded the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature in 2021.
Patrick Langley
Patrick Langley is an established writer on art and literature for publications such as frieze, Art Agenda, Art Review, Rhizome, and more. Langley is also a contributor editor, and writer, at The White Review. Langley has also been a runner-up for the Deborah Rogers Award for the title The Brothers King, an early draft of Arkady.
Pedro Carmona-Alvarez
Pedro Carmona-Alvarez was born in La Serena, Chile in 1972. At the age of ten, he and his family fled to Argentina, and the family later moved to Norway. He made his debut with a collection of poetry in 1997, and has since published several award-winning books. The Weather Changed, Summer Came and So On was longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award in 2017.
Ruth Lillegraven
Ruth Lillegraven debuted in 2005 with a collection of poetry entitled Big Bad Poems. Since then, she has published a novel, six poetry collections, as well as children books. Her work has been nominated for several prizes and she was awarded, among other distinctions, the Brage Prize and the Nynorsk Literature Prize. Her first psychological crime thriller, Everything is Mine (Alt er mitt), has enjoyed tremendous success and multiple international sales.
Sandra Kolstad
Sandra Kolstad is a Norwegian musician, composer, producer, and copywriter. Kolstad frequently works in the intersection of music and literature, including as a composer for the performing arts. Her most recent album releases are Burning Love (2019) and Elv på Himmelen (2019). The latter includes twelve poems by Jon Fosse that she has set to music. Two Words for Destruction is her fiction debut.
Sigri Sandberg
For over twenty years, Sigri Sandberg has worked for various Norwegian media outlets. She spent several years living on the Arctic island of Svalbard and has written 15 books about nature, wilderness philosophy, climate, and polar regions. Sandberg has published 18 books to date. An Ode to Darkness (2019), narrative non-fiction on light pollution, has sold to 11 languages.
Stine Pilgaard
Stine Pilgaard (1984) is from Aarhus, Denmark. She attended Forfatterskolen, the Danish creative writing academy, and she has master’s degrees in Danish Literature and Media Studies. My Mother Says (2012) is her first novel; it was nominated for the Danish Radio Novel Prize and won the Debut Novel Prize from the Bodil and Jørgen Munch-Christensen Literature Fund. She has since published two bestselling novels, including the 2020 bestseller Meter i sekundet (forthcoming in English with the title THE LAND OF SHORT SENTENCES).
Thomas Winje Øijord
Thomas Winje Øijord is a writer and photographer. His literary debut was in 2003 with the critically acclaimed Hatten og andre forstyrrende momenter (“The Hat and Other Disruptive Elements”). In 2007 his novel Kongeriket Norge (“The Kingdom of Norway”) was published. In addition to ghost-writing Erik Jensen’s På innsiden, he has co-authored two thrillers with Jensen: Attentatet (“The Assassination”) (2016) and Skjulte Djevler (“Hidden Devils”) (2018). He has also written and illustrated several fact books for children, most recently Hva skal du bli? (“What do you want to be when you grow up?”) (2016).
Thorvald Steen
Thorvald Steen’s (b. 1954) literary career began in 1983, and he has since produced a diverse body of work spanning a variety of genres. Translated into 30 languages so far, Steen has received praise and prizes for the quality of his authorship in Norway and abroad.
Trine-Lise Rygh
Trine-Lise Rygh (born in 1974) lives in Kolsås. She has a bachelor’s degree in Dissemination of Literature from UIO and has written articles for Harvestmagazine.no and other publications. She was awarded the Norwegian National Association for Language Consolidation’s (Landslaget for språklig samling) literary prize for her debut novel Hundedager (Dog Days, 2020).
Unni Eikeseth
Unni Eikeseth is a chemist, a former science journalist, and presenter for the Norwegian broadcaster NRK. She has written several popular science books for both children and adults, such as Norwegian Researching Feats (2016). She works at the Department of Teacher Education at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
Victoria Kielland
Victoria Kielland’s first book, the short prose collection I lyngen 2013 (In the Heather) was shortlisted for the Tarjei Vesaas Debutant Prize. In 2016, Kielland’s first novel Dammyr (Marsh Pond), was shortlisted for the Youth Critics’ Prize. My Men is her breakthrough novel, published to rave reviews in Norway in 2021, awarded The Thorleif Dahl Prize and The Dobloug Prize, awarded by the Swedish Academy, and is an international success, so far sold to 16 languages and longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award.