Published: 17 November 2012

Born in Sandefjord in 1941, Dag Solstad is widely regarded as Norway’s most important contemporary novelist and a chronicler of his generation, whose career reflects the development of Norwegian society from the 1960s onwards. He is part of the first generation in Norway to have unrestricted access to tertiary education and, like many of his contemporaries, subsequently eschewed social democracy for a more radical politics. In his youth he was heavily influenced by the Polish novelist and dramatist Witold Gombrowicz, whose work shaped Solstad’s theories of social role-play. While at university in the 1960s, Solstad and a number of other young writers launched the “Profil-opprøret”― the Profil rebellion―in which they used the literary journal “Profil” to champion literary modernism. In the 1970s, the “Profil generation” adopted a dogmatic leftist political stance, which Solstad later abandoned in a famous essay published in 1980. Solstad made his literary debut in 1965 with a collection of symbolic, Kafkaesque short stories entitled “Spiraler”, but since 1969 the form that has preoccupied him is the novel. Together with fellow writer Jon Michelet, Solstad has also written five essayistic books covering five world championships in soccer.

Solstad's novels have been translated into more than 30 languages. In 1989 he received the Nordic Council's Literary Prize. Novel 11, Book 18 was nominated for the Independent Foreign Fiction prize in Great Britain in 2009.

Published: 14 October 2012

Knut Ljosland, born in Kristiansand 1946, studied German philology at Oslo University and worked as a secondary school teacher. He graduated with "Zur Nachbarschaft" about the poetry of Johannes Bobrowski.

In 1984 he published a volume of Bobrowski in Norwegian, ”Grannelag Sarmatien”, followed by editions of Peter Huchel (”Vegfar”), the Rumanian-German poet Anemone Latzina (”Dagboksdagar”) and Wassily Kandinsky's ”Klangar”.

Knut Ljosland is member of the Norwegian Translators' Association and has published articles on literature in magazines and newspapers.

Published: 09 June 2012

Kittelsen had his debut as a poet in 1970. He has since than published several poetry cycles and collections, as well as fables, dramatic works and translations of poetry.

He is known for his dialogues, partly with colleagues and partly in the work with the translation of poetry from distant languages in relation to the Nordic language area like Arabian, Persian, Korean, Latvian and Sumerian. He also has poetical dialogue with the most ancient poetical traditions in the Nordic Countries – the Old Norse Poetic Edda where at first he translates the old text and than presents a contemporary literary answer. Erling is known as a writer who renews language, a poet and storyteller. He is a writer who moves in untraditional ways, both with the language in his books and dramatic works and his literary activity through events and happenings. His last play has been translated and performed several times in the Middle East.

He has received several literary prices, amongst them The Aschehoug Prize (awarded on a binding recommendation by the Norwegian Critics Organization) and The Dobloug Prize (awarded by the Swedish Academy).

Published: 30 May 2012

Arild Vange (b. 1955) is a Norwegian poet and translator. His work is concerned with finding ways of incorporating listening into the formal process of making poems and associated texts. His most recent book of poems, annerledes enn (otherwise than) (Aschehoug 2010), has been translated into German by Andrea Dobrowolski and published by Yara Edition, Graz.

Vange also works as a translator from German to Norwegian and has published books by Peter Huchel, Botho Strauss, Georg Trakl, Peter Waterhouse, Brigitte Oleschinski, Franz Kafka, Yoko Tawada, Thomas Kling and Anja Utler.

Published: 14 December 2011

Mie Hidle was born in Stavanger in 1974. While completing her PhD in the History of Ideas at the University of Oslo she also worked off and on in publishing, for the most part for the publishers Pax and Spartacus. In 2002 she branched into translation, primarily translating non-fiction works from English. She is currently a full-time translator as well as working as a literary critic and a newspaper columnist. Her literary translations from Danish include works by Jens Smærup Sørensen and Steffen Jacobsen as well as several works by Carsten Jensen.

Published: 09 October 2011

Liv Hatle studied Nordic languages and Finnish at Stockholm University. She has been educated as a teacher, before she took a professional theatre and dance education at the Laban Art of Movement Studio in London, Tampere, Århus and Oslo.

She has experience from teaching and working with theatrical presentations. She has also been working as a free lance journalist and translated Saami writer Nils-Aslak Valkeapää and Finnish-Estonian writer Aino Kallas with great success into New-Norwegian.

She turned ”Barbara von Tisenhusen” by Aino Kallas into a monologue to be performed in Oslo and Bergen where she lives.