Holmberg wins Kirsi Kunnas poetry award

Poet Niillas Holmberg has received Kirsi Kunnas poetry award, given out every second year to the authors of bold, vivid and influencal modern poetry.

The jury described Holmberg, a prominent figure in the Sami culture, and his poetry as intermediaries between two worlds:

Photo by Marek Sabogal

“Niillas Holmberg (b. 1990) is a poet, musician, actor and activist from [the northern Finnish area of] Utsjoki, well-known in all the Sami area. Holmberg is also known as an interpreter from the Sami culture into the modern western world and back. […] Holmberg’s poetry is diffuse and it crosses language boundaries. In it, the concepts of locality and tradition are intertwined with universal themes. Holmberg tries to remember things that have been forced to be forgotten but are still trying to surface. Identity and the recognition of the relationship between men and the nature are the central themes in his works.”

Underfoot (2019)

Niillas Holmberg’s sixth collection Underfoot was published last year to a wide critical acclaim. The jury stated:

“The poetry of Holmberg’s latest collection Underfoot (2019) is political and combatant. With smooth strokes, it succeeds in diagnosing the oblivion and the wrongfulness of the modern world and in giving hope of a better future.”

Click the links to read more about the Underfoot and the author.

Eva Frantz nominated for the Glass Key Award

Photo: Marica Rosengård

The best Finnish crime novel of 2019, Eighth Maiden by Eva Frantz, is a nominee for the best Nordic crime novel.

The five novels competing for the best Scandinavian crime novel prize Glass Key Award are Eva Frantz with The Eighth Maiden (Finland), Camilla Grebe with Skuggjägaren (Sweden), Gretellise Holm with Dødfunden (Denmark), Jo Nesbø with Kniv (Norway) and Lilja Sigurðardóttir with Svik (Iceland).

The Eight Maiden was awarded with the best crime novel of the year prize in Finland, and it was a nominee for the Torch-bearer Prize too. (Read the news here and here.) Second novel starred by police officer Anna Glad, The Eight Maiden shows Eva Frantz as the top of her craft. The multi-layered, chilling novel about the past evils working their way to the present has been both the critics’ and the audience’s favourite.

The Eighth Maiden (2018)

Just out with a new Anna Glad novel, Out of the Game, Eva Frantz has established herself as one of the top crime authors in Finland. In addition to four crime novels, she has written a middle-grade horror novel Raspberry Hill, awarded with the Runeberg Junior Prize (read the news here).

Read more about Eva Frantz from her author presentation and interview.

Novels by Eva Frantz:

Summer Isle (2016)
The Blue Villa (2017, Anna Glad #1)
The Eighth Maiden (2018, Anna Glad #2)
Out of the Game (2020, Anna Glad #3)
Raspberry Hill (children’s novel, 2018)

Interviews with Writers!

We are continuing our creative literary interviews series with HLA’s writers! As Online-Bologna is approaching, we thought, this month we will honour two children’s writers. Malin Klingenberg, the author of many children’s and YA books, including the spectacular The Life of Fart, talks about writing for children and… about farts, of course! The entire interview can be found here.

Tomi Kontio, the author (in collaboration with Elina Warsta) of the beloved, Finlandia-nominated A Dog Called Cat book series talks about his warm and philosophical characters, the importance of friendship and the mission of children’s books. Read his interview here.

J.P. Laitinen awarded Tampere City Literature Prize

One of the new titles on our Spring catalogue, Fictional by J.P. Laitinen received Tampere City Literature Prize!

As the jury stated:

Laitinen’s debut novel Fictional follows, for a time-frame of one day, the main protagonist who is developing a theory of a fictional human and believes to have found an explanation to the human mind and reality. The novel is contemplative, satirical and humorous, and encourages its readers to think about reality and its boundaries. For its various levels and perspectives, Fictional is a book that can be immediately read again.

J.P. Laitinen has previously published books of nonfiction and worked as an environmental journalist. Fictional is his debut novel and a fierce, unapologetically philosophical and psychological story of a day of manifold losses and their denial, and of the desire to see the world the way you want it to be. Through the character of Henry Qualia, Laitinen merges philosophical boldness with an enormous tenderness toward other people. It has been compared to the works of such authors as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Peter Handke and Thomas Bernhard.

Tampere City Literature Prize has been awarded since 1944. It is given yearly for an outstanding work of fiction to a writer that is either born in Tampere city or lives there at the moment.

Congratulations to the author!

Lundberg’s ICE sold to Poland

One of the most beautiful Finlandia Prize winning novels ever, Ulla-Lena Lundberg’s ICE has been acquired to Poland by Marpress.

Ice (2012)

The eight foreign rights deal for Ice was done via Book/lab Literary Agency in Poland.

One of the all-time bestsellers in Finland with over 100,000 copies sold, Ulla-Lena Lundberg’s masterpiece has been previously published in English by Sort of Books, in German by Mare Verlag, in Bulgarian by Izida, in Croatian by Hena com, in Danish by Gyldendal, in Estonian by Eesti Raamat and in Hungarian by Széphalon Könyvmuhely.

The novel tells about a novice Lutheran priest, his wife and baby daughter arriving at a windswept island off the coast of Finland right after the war, in 1946. There they encounter the islanders, a self-sufficient community of fisher folk, and little by little, year by year they get rooted in the unadorned landscape.

It is a grand novel. You can read it as a gripping story of people and their fates, as a condensation of the tensions in a community, but also as an allegory of the mankind.”
– Aamulehti newspaper