Two young female writers represent the Nordic countries at Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali 3-7 October.
Finnish Riikka Pulkkinen (1980) published her debut novel Raja (The Border) in 2006, which grew into one of the most celebrated novels that year.
Riikka Pulkkisen’s international break through was her second novel Totta (True), published by Albin Michel press in 2010 and afterwards being translated into several different languages.
Riikka Pulkkinen was awarded the Kaarle Prize and the Laila Hirvisaari Prize in 2007 after her debut novel and in 2010 Pulkkinen’s second novel was nominated as a Finlandia Prize candidate, which can be seen as the most prestigious writers’ award in Finland.
Her most recent novel Vieras (Book of Strangers) was published in Finnish on the 18th of September. Finland’s biggest daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat quoted that the novel is responding to the appointed expectations of a contemporary novel with great courage.
Norwegian Kjersti Annesdatter Skomsvold (1979) made her literary debut in 2009 with the novel Jo fortere jeg går, jo mindre er jeg (The Faster I Walk, The Smaller I Am), which won her the Tarjei Vesaas’ Debutant Prize , it was nominated to the Norwegian Booksellers’ Prize and has been sold for translated into 10 languages.
Her second book Monstermenneske (Monster Human) has just been published this month.
The Festival
The international Ubud Writers & Readers Festival began as a healing and economic development project after the Bali bombings in 2002. The Festival is an annual-ongoing event, held each October, in a month that commemorates the first Bali bombing. Now in its ninth year, the Festival gathers around 100 writers from more than twenty five different countries all over the world and has grown into one of the biggest international festival for writers and readers in South-East Asia.
The Ubud Writers & Readers Festival 2012 has chosen its theme from the title of a bestselling book This Earth of Mankind: Bumi Manusia by one of Indonesia’s contemporary writers, Pramoedya Ananta Toer. The story is set at the end of Dutch colonial rule and was written while Pramoedya was a political prisoner on the island of Buru in eastern Indonesia.
Besides Riikka Pulkkinen the Nordic countries are represented by Norwegian Kjersti Annesdatter Skomsvold. She made her literary debut in 2009 with the novel Jo fortere jeg går, jo mindre er jeg (The Faster I Walk, The Smaller I Am), which won her the, it was nominated to the Norwegian Booksellers’ Prize and has been translated into several languages.
