Caroline Åberg: Stockholm Noir

Inger Edelfeldtis an author and artist, born in Stockholm in 1956. She is internationally known for her illustrations for J.R.R. Tolkien’s stories in The 1985 J.R.R. Tolkien Calendar but in her home country mostly for her books: more than thirty titles in different genres — prose, poetry, works for children and young adults, comic books, and plays. She has received several awards for her work, and currently lives in Stockholm.

Carl-Michael Edenborgis a publisher, writer, and critic with a PhD in intellectual history. He has written several short stories and novels. His independent Vertigo publishing company has brought out many nonconformist classics, from Marquis de Sade to Samuel Delany. His latest novel, The Alchemist’s Daughter , was nominated for the prestigious Swedish August Prize in 2014.

Åke Edwardsonis the author of novels — for adults and young adults — short stories, and plays. His fiction has won numerous awards in Sweden and abroad, he was a finalist for the 2007 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and he is a three-time winner of the Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy’s Best Swedish Crime Novel award. Edwardson’s books have sold over six million copies in twenty-seven languages. When he isn’t forced to write, he cooks.

Torbjörn Elenskyhas published three novels, two short story collections, a book on Cuba, and an introduction to the writings of Italo Calvino. He also works as a critic and essayist, covering a wide range of topics.

Inger Frimansson, one of the most well-known crime writers in Sweden, lives in Södertälje, near Stockholm. She has written nearly forty books in various genres, and her work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Two of her books have won the Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy’s Best Swedish Crime Novel award. Her most recent publication is An Axe for Alice.

Martin Holmén, born in 1974, teaches history and Swedish at a high school in Stockholm. His debut novel Clinch , which contains some of the characters from his story in this volume, was published by Albert Bonnier Publishing in October 2015, with subsequent editions coming out in Australia, France, Italy, and the UK. He is currently working on Out for Count, the second book in the Harry Kvist trilogy, and the third and final installment, Slugger , is due out in 2017.

Nathan Larsonis an award-winning film composer, musician, producer, and the author of three novels, the latest of which is The Immune System . He has made music for many films, including Boys Don’t Cry, Margin Call , and the Swedish films Stockholm Stories and Lilja 4-Ever. He and his wife, singer Nina Persson, divide their time between New York City and Sweden.

Rika Lesser(translator), poet, educator, and Feldenkrais teacher, has published four volumes of poetry and translations of fifteen collections of poetry or fiction, among them works by Göran Sonnevi and Rainer Maria Rilke. Her honors include the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award in Poetry, the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award, a Fulbright, two NEA translation grants, and two translation prizes from the Swedish Academy.

Malte Perssonis a writer of fiction, poetry, and children’s books. He is also a translator, a literary critic, and a magazine columnist. He has lived in Gothenburg and Stockholm, and currently resides in Berlin, Germany. His short story “Fantasy” was published in English by Readux Books.

Kerri Pierce(translator) is a writer and translator living in Rochester, New York. Her published translations span several genres from Dutch, German, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish. She was the recipient of a translation fellowship from Dalkey Archive Press in 2009 and holds a PhD in comparative literature from Pennsylvania State University.

Anna-Karin Selbergwas born in 1975. She is a philosopher and the author of two novels, Vit ( White ) and Skymning över Al-Omistan ( Dawn over Al-Omistan ).

Johan Theorinwas born in 1963 in Gothenburg, and now resides in Stockholm. Echoes from the Dead, his first novel, has been translated into twenty-five languages and was made into a Swedish feature film in 2013. His second novel, The Darkest Room , was voted the Best Swedish Crime Novel in 2008, won the Glass Key award in 2009, and the 201 °CWA International Dagger. A third Öland novel, The Quarry, was published in 2011, and a stand-alone suspense novel, The Asylum , was published in 2013.

Laura A. Wideburg(translator) has translated Swedish crime novels by Inger Frimansson, Lars Kepler, Denise Rudberg, and Helene Tursten. She won a gold medal for Best Translated Book from Foreword magazine for Inger Frimansson’s Good Night, My Darling. She has a PhD in Germanic languages and literatures, and specialized in historical linguistics and medieval literature. She currently teaches Swedish at the Swedish Cultural Center in Seattle where she lives with her family and two cats.

Lina Wolff, born in 1973, is the author of the story collection Många människor dör som du (Many People Die Like You) . In 2012, she was awarded Vi magazine’s prize for literature for her novel Bret Easton Ellis och de andra hundarna (Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs), which will be published in English by And Other Stories in early 2016. She lives in southern Sweden.