Chair No. 13 − Anne Swärd

Author.
Elected: 2019.

Anne Swärd, whose novels have been translated into more than twenty languages, is highly active in an international context, regularly participating in cultural exchanges and literary events all around the world.

The author Anne Swärd was born in 1969 in Troedsberga in the southern Swedish region of Skåne. After graduating from secondary school in Klippan, where her focus was on humanities, she moved to Stockholm in 1988. Following university studies in social anthropology and other subjects, she attended the University of Arts, Crafts and Design, specialising in photography and painting. During this time, she spent a lengthy period as an exchange student at the Limerick School of Art and Design in Ireland. In the late 1990s, she took a one-year remote learning course in writing at Nordiska Folkhögskolan in Kungälv. Between 1999 and 2001, she took a foundational course followed by additional training at the Nordens Folkhögskola writers’ college in Biskops-Arnö. She has also worked as an art teacher and culture journalist.

Since 1993, she has lived in various places in Österlen on the south coast of Sweden, with the occasional shorter stay in Stockholm. She has also spent longer periods and writing trips abroad, including travels to New York, Athens, Rome, Paris and Berlin. In 2017, she moved to a farm in Fyledalen outside Ystad.

Swärd made her debut as a novelist in 2003 with Polarsommar (Arctic Summer), which was nominated for the August Prize. A family drama kaleidoscopically viewed from the perspective of six family members, the book earned her an early international readership, and her novels have been translated into around twenty languages to date.

This was followed in 2006 by Kvicksand (Quicksand), a multi-layered socially critical dystopia of the future set in Copenhagen, with personal life stories at its heart. The book was awarded the inaugural Mare Kandre Prize.

In 2010, came Till sista andetaget (Breathless). It has been said of this third novel that it sensitively yet powerfully swings between strong polarities such as harshness and beauty, ice and fire, north and south. At the same time, it never shies away from what takes place in the taboo-laden borderland that exists between the story’s two young protagonists, whose deep and secret bond is subjected to scrutiny and questioning from the outside world.

Akta dig för kärleken (Watch Out for Love) is the title of the 2015 omnibus publication that presents all three of these novels in a single volume, with a newly written foreword by the author. The following year, Swärd was awarded the inaugural Helga Prize in the spirit of Hjalmar Söderberg.

In 2017, Vera was published, set in France, Poland and Sweden before, during and after the Second World War. Critically acclaimed and widely translated, the novel deals with themes of escape, survival, guilt and resistance. It was also the book with which she made her breakthrough into a larger, broader readership.

In 2020, her fifth novel, Jackie, was published – a book about love, obsession and survival.

In addition to writing novels, Swärd has also published short stories in several newspapers, literary magazines and anthologies. She moreover works as a culture journalist focusing on literary topics, often with an international perspective.

For Anne Swärd, international contexts are a particular field of interest. The success of her translated books has brought many opportunities for cultural exchange and for promoting Swedish literature abroad. She has participated in translators’ seminars, literary festivals, book fairs, panel debates on literary and contemporary issues and other cultural and university events in Europe, the USA, China, North Africa and Latin America – whether at the initiative of the Swedish Arts Council, the Swedish Institute, the Nordic Council of Ministers, the EU, the Swedish embassies in the relevant countries or any one of the numerous international literary organisations. She is fully committed to a global outlook, to participating in and contributing to various international and multicultural contexts.

In 2019, she succeeded the author Sara Stridsberg on chair number 13 of the Swedish Academy and has been a member of the Nobel Committee since 2021.