Emma Puikkonen

Emma Puikkonen (b. 1974) is one of Finland’s foremost contemporary prose writers. Her works explore highly topical themes and phenomena, of which climate change has recently become the most important. She is a trained drama instructor who also teaches the literary arts and theatre.

Her work Eurooppalaiset unet (2016) was nominated for the Finlandia and Export Prizes, and an earlier novel, Lupaus (2019), met with critical acclaim. Her novel Musta peili (2021) (“The Black Mirror”, not published in English) was nominated for the Runeberg Prize and has been nominated for the 2023 Nordic Council Literature Prize.


Riikka Sandberg

Riikka Sandberg (b. 1989) is a Finnish author who grew up in the midst of boatsheds and the sea breeze. She studied Finnish and Creative Writing at the University of Turku and currently teaches at the University of Helsinki. Sandberg’s debut book Ørja was published in February 2023 and has been described as a thoughtfully constructed novel in which the fjords and the churning sea set a grand stage.

Sandberg is inspired by the Nordic languages, history and nature, and the fictional isles in her debut novel Ørja were inspired by a small and rugged Norwegian island to where she retreated alone to write. Eventually she carried out research for her novel in Norway, the Faroe Islands and the Finnish Lapland and archipelago. Sandberg considers it important to write about women who are, for one reason or another, cast out or have themselves left the society or their community, and about those who have forgotten to live their own truth.


Kaisa Paasto

Kaisa Paasto spent her childhood in the north of Finland and now lives in Espoo with her husband, two children, bunnies and a shih tzu. Kaisa has a master’s degree in Comparative Literature and has previously worked as translator, content specialist and entrepreneur. Apart from the Anni books she has published a domestic thriller for adults by Storytel Original.


Ann-Luise Bertell

Ann-Luise Bertell is an author and a theater director, born 1971 in Oravais, Finland. She has graduated from the Finnish Theater Academy, and debuted as a writer in 1997 with the collection of poems, ‘Rus av gul’, and has since written poems, short stories, a children’s book, plays and two novels. Longing (Vänd om min längtan, 2016), was awarded the Yle Prize and the Choreus Prize. Her second novel Homestead (Heiman) was published in 2020 and was nominated for the Finlandia Prize, and her third novel Yearning (Glöm Bort Din Saknad) was published 2022.

Ann-Luise has been Wasa Theatre’s director since 2020, but is also a mother of three, dog owner, hiker, seeker, spy and bookworm.


Erika Vik

Erika Vik is an award-winning author, illustrator and producer of the LANU! literature festival. She loves rock music, fennec foxes and the feel of wind on her face – still, she’ll never again sail on the North Sea when the storm is rising.

Vik was born in Hyvinkää, a small town in southern Finland. Vik has a Master of Arts degree. Since spring 2019 she has spent half of her working hours as a full-time writer. She’s also the creator and producer of LANU!, an awarded virtual literature festival, targeted for children, teenagers and young adults. The annual festival has been held since 2020, and Vik has produced and filmed several short documentaries for the festival.

Before writing With You, Forever, Vik has written three popular YA fantasy titles, which are loved by a wide audience and received the Kuvastaja honorable mention as an excellent complete fantasy series.

Vik’s fourth novel, a psychological thriller With You Forever (Luonasi ikuisesti) will be published in April 2023. The fast-paced novel with a dense atmosphere takes place in the brutal world of goth rock and dark desires. With You Forever is Vik’s debut in adult fiction.


Sirpa Kähkönen

Sirpa Kähkönen was born to a family that had been harshly treated by the history of the 1900s. World War II and the Civil War preceding it, had wounded her family members and marked them with heavy silence and unspoken words.

Mapping out that silence became Sirpa’s work. The first questions that arose were related to her closest circle: what had happened to her beloved grandparents? From her personal sphere the intellectual curiosity widened to touch upon the history of Finland and then the history of Europe, and finally, researching the fate of an individual during times of crisis.

Sirpa Kähkönen lives and works in Helsinki. She constructs her works upon research, using a wide array of archives, newspaper clippings, research material, and contemporary literature. Inspired by microhistorical research tradition, Sirpa writes about how mentalities are formed, and how the immaterial inheritance runs in family lines and in societies.

Sirpa Kähkönen’s historical novel begins where source information ends. It opens the gates to experiencing the past in a sensory way; the characters live out the story as physical, sensual beings.

Sirpa Kähkönen has published twelve novels of which three have been nominated for the prestigious Finlandia prize, one for the Tieto-Finlandia prize for non-fiction and one for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. In 2022, Kähkönen received the Finnish Cultural Foundation’s Grand Prize for significant achievements in culture.

Sirpa Kähkönen is the Chairman of The Union of Finnish Writers.

Awards and nominations:

Kirjallisuuden valtionpalkinto 1992 – The State Literary Prize 1992

Savonia-palkinto 1999 – Savonia Prize 1999

Kuopion taiteilijaseuran kirjallisuuden tunnustuspalkinto 2003 – The Kuopio Artist Society’s Literary Award 2003

Kiitos kirjasta -mitali 2008 – Thank You for the book medallion 2008

Savon Sanomien Savonmuan Hilima -titteli 2010

Otavan kirjasäätiön Veijo Meri -palkinto 2012 – Otava Literary Fund Veijo Meri Prize 2012

Pro-Finlandia -mitali 2015 – Pro Finlandia Medallion 2015

Suomi-palkinto 2016 – Suomi-Finland Prize 2016 from the Ministry of Education and Culture

Savonia-palkinto 2021 – Savonia Prize 2021

Suomen Kulttuurirahaston suurpalkinto – The Finnish Cultural Foundation’s Grand Prize 2021


Martta Kaukonen

Martta Kaukonen (1976) lives in Helsinki and is a film critic, whose reviews have been published in both Finland’s biggest newspaper Helsingin Sanomat and a popular women’s weekly magazine Me Naiset. Martta has a master’s degree in arts. She has interviewed the likes of Robert Downey Jr. and Justin Bieber. Martta met her future husband at his second hand bookshop and fell in love. Alongside writing, Martta loves psychological thrillers, film noir, flea markets, abandoned houses and travelling. Martta’s debut novel FOLLOW THE BUTTERFLY was published in March 2021. FOLLOW THE BUTTERFLY is an Instagram sensation in Finland, and the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper released a highly-praising review of it. During the first two months, the audiobook was listened to an awe-inspiring 2000 times and over. FOLLOW THE BUTTERFLY  has been compared to Gillian Flynn’s novel ‘Gone Girl’. Martta dreams of her book being adapted into a movie – and such a great one that her colleagues would grant it a five-star review.


Katja Kallio

Katja Kallio is a critically acclaimed bestselling author and screenwriter. Since her striking debut on the Finnish literature scene in 2000, she has described the life and faith of misfit women at odds with the community,  in modern and past times, with her distinctive voice and thoroughly visual style. Her new, much anticipated novel This Transparent Heart, available in Finnish in August 2021, tells the forbidden love story of a young Finnish woman and a Soviet POW during WW2. Her previous novel, Amanda of the Night, inspired by true events in a mental institution island for women, was received with unanimous praise. Her books have sold more than 180,000 copies.

Kallio is praised for her accurate portrayals of the human mind. In her six novels she revisits themes such as the constant push-and-pull between distance and intimacy in a person’s life and the meaning of passion as a barrier-breaking force.

She has written box office movie adaptations of her own novels, and been a candidate for national literary and motion picture awards, including the prestigious Jussi Award for the Best Screenplay. An ardent cinema lover, she has written about movies in the iconic Image magazine for more than fifteen years.

Before writing she worked as a publishing editor, and translated fiction from Italian, Spanish and English. She hosts her own live literary salon, speaks fluent Italian with a Roman accent, and dedicates her free time to classical ballet.


Juha Itkonen

Juha Itkonen (b. 1975) is one of his generation’s most recognized authors in Finland. Itkonen has written eight novels, a collection of novellas, a children’s book, an epistolary novel together with Kjell Westö and several plays. In 2019, his works have been translated into Swedish, Norwegian, German, and Danish. His previous work Ihmettä kaikki (in English, “Everything Is A Miracle”, not translated) was nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. Itkonen has won several Finnish literary prizes and earned two Finlandia Prize nominations. He lives in Helsinki’s Arabianranta together with his wife Maija Itkonen and four children.

Families, generations, and parenthood are regular themes in his novels, including in his newest work ‘They Had It All’ (Kaikki oli heidän, orig. Otava 2021) Itkonen loves music, both as a listener and a player, which shows in his books. The passing of time is an eternal mystery at the core of his writing – his novels tend to have a melancholy undertone, yet they are also filled with life, humor, and energy.


A.R.S. Horkka

A.R.S. Horkka is a very private person and feels unwelcomed in social situations. This author doesn’t give interviews, refusing to step into the public spotlight. Horkka is a human being without a face, skin color, or gender. Part of the Nordic Horror series lure and ‘lore’ is that its author is just a “story,” among other stories.

A.R.S. Horkka is also a pseudonym for wife-and-husband author-illustrator duo Riina and Sami Kaarla and author Anders Vacklin. They are Team Horkka, and this team is on fire. Because – Season 2 is coming!
The authors are already planning seven new Nordic Horror novels.

Riina and Sami Kaarla have worked for over a decade as an author-illustrator duo. They have written and illustrated dozens of internationally sold Moomin books based on characters created by Tove Jansson. Their latest children’s novel series, “Pet Agents” has also been an international success. Its rights are now sold to six countries.

Anders Vacklin is a prize-winning screenwriter, dramaturge, script doctor, creative writing teacher, and author of several non-fiction books on scriptwriting. He has written stage plays, musicals, and even a Virtual Reality game. Anders has also co-authored a YA novel-trilogy based on a script for a short film, a success at PAGE, BlueCat, and ScreenCraft screenwriting competitions.


Aki Ollikainen

Aki Ollikainen has studied social policy at the University of Jyväskylä and is a trained photographer. He has previously worked as an editor and, among other things, at a metal workshop, a library, and a post office.

His debut novel White Hunger received the Helsingin Sanomat Literary Prize for Best Debut Novel of 2012 and was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2016. Ollikainen lives in Lohja with his wife and two children. Aki and his wife Milla form the pseudonym A.M. Ollikainen and have jointly published two crime novels.


Riikka Pulkkinen

Riikka Pulkkinen (b. 1980) is one of the top names in Finnish literature. Her debut novel The Limit (2006) gained wide attention, was a bestseller, and was adapted into a play and a TV series in Finland. Her international breakthrough came with her second novel, True (2010), which was the one novel everyone was talking about that year at the Frankfurt book fair. The novel has been published in 17 countries to date.

Pulkkinen’s novels are characterized by the precision with which she describes the psychology of the characters, and the philosophical themes that reflect from the characters into the refined structure of the novels and culminate on the level of the plot. The main questions she explores in her novels concern power, responsibility, and justice.

Pulkkinen has an M.A. in Literary Studies from the University of Helsinki, and she lives in Helsinki with her husband and her two children. She enjoys dancing and running in the forest or by the seaside. If she weren’t a writer, she would be a psychologist or a baker.

For her works, Riikka Pulkkinen has received the Kaarle award in 2007, the Laila Hirvisaari Fund stipend in 2007, the Veijo Meri Award in 2019, and her novel True was nominated for the Finlandia Prize in 2010.


Hanna Meretoja

Hanna Meretoja is an internationally renowned literary scholar, a professor of comparative literature, and narrative theorist whose work has been published by prestigious academic publishers. Her monographs include The Ethics of Storytelling: Narrative Hermeneutics, History, and the Possible (2018, Oxford University Press). Her work is mainly in the fields of narrative studies, cultural memory studies, and trauma studies. As a novelist, Meretoja has a unique lyrical voice that seamlessly threads cultural theory and philosophy into a poetic, ruptured narrative with an acute sense of lived experience. She has a passionate relationship to the sea and wants to write in the rhythm of the flow of water.


Heidi Holmavuo

Heidi Holmavuo is a crime writer and journalist. Her lengthy cooperation with the authorities, along with writing a book and a TV series about the Finnish Police Rapid Response Unit (colloquially known as the Bear Squad), have made Heidi a talented crime writer. Holmavuo wants to open people’s eyes to things that can change the world in a blink of an eye, both on the individual and societal level.


Vera Vala

Vera Vala’s roots are in Finnish forests, but her soul belongs to Italy, where she has been living for over 25 years. She has an infinite thirst for knowledge that has taken her to study various academic subjects from Physics to Assyriology and Romance Languages, and the information acquired during those years has been useful as background research for her novels.

Vera’s adventurous spirit has taken her from diving with sharks while living in Seychelles to rafting in Italian Alps and exploring the shadier parts of her former hometown, Rome: the diverse experiences have come in handy while creating intriguing plot twists.

Currently, Vera lives with her family in Milan where she is studying to become a clinical psychologist with a special interest in Forensic Psychology. Vera creates novel scenes in her mind while cooking Italian meals, and she loves slow chess games and meditation.


Kaj Korkea-aho

Kaj Korkea-aho (b. 1983) is a writer, columnist and a comedian. Moreover, he has a career as an actor and a host in TV and radio. In his varied acting roles, he has often taken a stand for the rights of queer people, and his texts often discuss themes such as growing up, sexual minorities, religious revival communities and literature.

Korkea-aho has published four novels: Se till mig som liten är (God Who Holds The Little Dear) (2009), Gräset är mörkare på andra sidan (The Grass Is Darker on the Other Side) (2012), Onda boken (The Evil Book) (2015) which has been already translated into six languages and sold to Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Germany and Denmark, and now – Röda rummet (The Red Room) (2021). His books have attained wide readership in Finland and have scored several prizes, such as the The Swedish Literary Society’s prize in 2010 and 2013, the Thanks for the Book Award in 2016 and the Längmans Cultural Foundation’s prize in 2018. In 2017, Korkea-aho’s YA book Virala genier (Viral Geniuses) was nominated for the prestigious Finlandia Prize for children’s and young adult’s literature.

Since 2005, together with Ted Forsström, Korkea-aho has created comedy in Swedish for radio, TV and plays, whilst also writing the YA series Zoo! (the basis for the TV series Virala genier). Together, they also run the Ted & Kaj podcast, one of the biggest podcasts in Finland.

Kaj Korkea-aho was born and raised in the small town of Esse in Ostrobothnia, but now lives in Helsinki.

 


Tiina Raevaara

Tiina Raevaara (b. 1979) is a writer, science journalist, and biologist who received a PhD for her work in genetics. She received the State Award for Public Information and the Pro Scientia Prize from the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. She has published eight novels, three non-fiction books, and a novella collection which was awarded the Runeberg Prize. Her suspense novel Double Helix (2020), the opening chapter of a new thriller series, received the Laurin Kirja audio book award, and the second installment in the series, Polar Vortex (2021), has been widely praised.

Raevaara’s books combine grand perspectives of natural science with compelling literary expression. She draws inspiration from Nordic nature, the major questions of science, and the complexities of humanity.

Raevaara lives in Kerava, a small town in Southern Finland, and goes on daily walks in the forest with her two black dogs.

 


Hanna Brotherus

Dancer, director and choreographer Hanna Brotherus is constantly addressing and probing the prevalent questions of society. Brotherus is a pioneer in community stage art, with an extraordinary ability to unite different groups of people and collaborators.

In her work, Brotherus has managed to unreservedly involve both cutting-edge artistic professionals, recovering addicts, daycare children, the elderly and many more.

With her debut novel ’My Only Home’, Hanna Brotherus has also redeemed her place as writer. Her book has become a major bestseller and presently Hanna is working on a new title.
Hanna’s exceptional experience as a performing dance artist also contributes creatively to her writing by offering a corporeal perspective that touches the readers in a unique way.

”My passion is to join together different people from different backgrounds and age groups. I believe in intuition, in the power of the touch and presence”.

 


Koko Hubara


A.M. Ollikainen

A. M. Ollikainen is a pseudonym for a husband-and-wife author duo Aki and Milla Ollikainen. Aki Ollikainen has published three novels and won the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize in 2012. He has also been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and Prix Femina in 2016.Milla Ollikainen has published three crime novels and won Like Publishing and the Finnish Detective Society’s Crime novel writing competition in 2012. The couple lives in Lohja with their two children.


Emmi Pesonen

Emmi Pesonen (b.1977) is a Helsinki-based writer, screenwriter and actress. She graduated in 2001 as a Master of Theater Arts and has worked as an actor in several in theaters, movies, and TV series. Pesonen is bilingual (Finnish-Swedish) and she has translated and dramatized Swedish-language plays. She is also the screenwriter of a movie The Violin Player (Violinist, Mjölk Movies), which premiered in Finland in 2018, and has toured successfully at more than 20 film festivals around the world (including Gothenburg, Moscow, Singapore, Kaliningrad). The film deals with power structures in the art world, passion and giving up.

The Most Beautiful Word (Otava, August 2020) is Pesonen’s debut novel. The book tells a story of a patchwork family from the point of view of the new step-mother. It’s a story of endless love, irreversible decision and learning new things. The movie rights have been optioned by Aurora Studios and a film is currently being developed.

 


Mooses Mentula

Mooses Mentula was born in Tuupovaara, Eastern Finland and grew up in Kuhmo, Kainuu.

From the age of 16 he worked as a journalist for newspapers and radio for several years. He completed his master’s degree in education at the University of Lapland, worked as a journalist and teacher in the north, and moved to Tuusula, where he has lived with his family for 14 years. He works as a headteacher, but writing is his greatest passion.

For Mentula writing means creating worlds of his own and living in them. He strives for intelligence and challenge and aims for a simple surface. Most importantly, all of his books contain hope and warmth. He likes to think of his style similar to J.M. Coetzee and Haruki Murakami. The Others of Us is Mentula’s third novel and some of his works have been translated in German.

 


Elina Backman

Elina Backman, 37, is a media & marketing professional living in Helsinki, in an old wooden 1920 house with a family of 2 kids and a husband. Elina loves books (all sorts), travelling, cycling and is a host of a Book & Wine Club. She is a creative soul with a commercial mind, and her goal is to find readers globally – her dream is a Netflix series based on her novels.

Her debut novel When the King Dies was published in May 2020 and has immediately gained an enormous amount of attention from the Finnish media, including a praising review by the biggest daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat and becoming an immediate bestseller in Finland with 10,000 copies sold in all formats. When the King Dies has been to-date sold in 11 territories and international TV series is in development.


Sara Medberg

SARA MEDBERG is a historian currently writing a doctoral dissertation about the education of highborn girls in the 18th century. The ideas for her novels are derived from her research. Medberg enjoys costume dramas, fashion from the past, castles, mansions, shopping and running. Her previous novel Golden Gate Manor (2018, Otava) has sold over 11,000 copies in Finland.


Hanna-Riikka Kuisma

Hanna-Riikka Kuisma (b. 1978) is a writer, art critic and columnist from Pori. Her latest novel, High-Rise, was nominated for the Finlandia Prize, and was awarded the Art Prize of the Satakunta Arts Council in 2019. Block of Flats is Kuisma’s sixth novel.

Kuisma’s works explore the dark sides of modern society and the human mind. The intense atmosphere, black humor and the surgically accurate descriptions are balanced by the colorful visuals and poetic language.


Inka Nousiainen

Inka Nousiainen is an award-winning author from Helsinki, who writes fiction, children’s books and lyrics for different artists. She was only 17 years old when her first novel was published and it won the Topelius Prize in 1994.


Eeva Rohas

Eeva Rohas is a critically acclaimed author who writes about social misfits. Rohas received her doctoral degree in contemporary culture research in 2016 with her study of The Sylvia Plath Forum. Raivo is her third work of fiction.


Petri Karra

Petri Karra is a writer from Helsinki, who is also known a screenwriter for tv and films. His works are often focused around families, and the circle of life. His debut novel The House of Branching Love (2008) has been made into a feature film, and a tv series based on his novel The Dark Light is currently under production in Finland.

 

Author photo by Aki Roukala


Mikko-Pekka Heikkinen

Mikko-Pekka Heikkinen was born in the Finnish countryside and lives in Helsinki. He works as a journalist, specializing on culture and nature. He has written 5 books and his work, praised for its humor and social satire, has been published also in English and Czech. Two of his novels have been adapted as screenplays and Reindeer Mafia is being made into a TV series.


Anniina Tarasova

Anniina Tarasova is a Helsinki storyteller who’s worked in the leadership of a startup. Her family comes from Finland, Karelia, and St. Petersburg—her grandfather and his parents emigrated soon after the Russian Revolution. As an adult, Anniina Tarasova reconnected with Russia, and especially St. Petersburg, during the year-and-ahalf she spent living there. In addition to workplace issues, Tarasova’s interests include startups, coding, and new business ideas. Even the cheesiest self-help books can inspire her, but her real literary influences and favorite books are to be found in other genres: Sujata Massey (Rei Shimura), Helen Fielding (Bridget Jones), Ljudmila Ulitskaja, and Charles Bukowski.


Katja Törmänen

KATJA TÖRMÄNEN is a history teacher by training and a writer by profession. She has also studied and taught creative writing. She lives in Oulu, Northern Finland.


Elina Hirvonen

ELINA HIRVONEN is an author of adults’ and children’s prose, a journalist and documentary filmmaker. She has written four highly acclaimed adults’ novels that are at the same time tragic and beautiful. She is also known for her picture book series Princess Rascal, and she is currently writing a middle-grade trilogy – the first book of the series, Julia & P.A.L. will be published in fall 2020.

She has received Kalevi Jäntti Prize, and Nuori Aleksis Prize and has been nominated for Finlandia Prize and Debut Prize.

 


Arto Halonen & Kevin Frazier

ARTO HALONEN is a film director and screenwriter, known for his strong socially-conscious stance towards his subjects. He is one of the few people in the world who have ever interviewed the killer Palle Hardrup. KEVIN FRAZIER is a novelist, nonfiction writer, essayist and reviewer who lives in Helsinki. Previous collaborations between Halonen and Frazier include the award-winning Shadow of the Holy Book.

The duo was previously known under the pseudonym Einar Hansen.


Heikki Valkama

Heikki Valkama is an acclaimed journalist who has worked as an editor-in-chief at several Finnish quality magazines. Additionally he has written books about Japan as well as translated from Japanese to Finnish. He grew up in Japan; when he was a teenager, a local yakuza boss tried to marry him off to his daughter. Fugu is his first novel.


Sissi Katz

Sissi Katz is an ophthalmologist from Helsinki. Elements of her novel, The Amazing Life and Times of Coco Kafka, are inspired by the author’s own life: she has grown epithelial cells of the eye, visited a dye-works in the Negev desert and lived next door to a varan. She is currently working on a second novel.


Leena Parkkinen

Leena Parkkinen has authored three prize-winning adults’ novels set in 20th century Europe, often about people living at the margins society. Her skillful use of detail is often imbued with an element of suspense. She has also written two children’s story books.

Parkkinen has received numerous literary awards, such as Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize for the best debut (2009), Academic Bookshop’s Bestselling Debut Prize (2009), Laila Hirvisaari Award (2010) and the Kalevi Jäntti Prize (2013), in addition to being nominated for the Tulenkantaja Export Prize 2017. Her works have been translated into seven languages to date.

 


Laura Gustafsson

Laura Gustafsson is a novelist and playwright. Recurring themes in her work include oppression, violence, animal rights and the environment, which she approaches with precision, passion, irony and humor.

Gustafsson’s accolades include nominations for the Finlandia Prize and Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize, and her works have been translated into French and German.


Iida Rauma

Iida Rauma is an author of two prize-winning novels. Her writing tackles notions of power, sexuality, violence, and the relationship between humans and nature – at times in essay format or narrative non-fiction. She holds a Masters in Political Science and lives in Turku, Finland.

She has received several literary awards for her work, for example the Torch-bearer Prize and Helmet Literature Prize in 2015 and Kalevi Jäntti Prize in 2016. In addition, she was nominated for the EU Literature Prize 2016, Toisinkoinen Prize in 2015, and Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize in 2011.

 


Harri Nykänen

Harri Nykänen is an industrious novelist who draws on his 20 years of experience as a crime reporter at Helsingin Sanomat, the largest daily in the Nordic countries. An author since 1986, he has written dozens of books portraying the customs and rules of the Helsinki underworld – through the eyes of both criminals and members of the police force. Nykänen has won the Finnish crime writing award The Clue twice, and was nominated for the Glass Key for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel in 2004.

Nykänen’s brutal antihero Raid, starring in ten of his books, has become iconic in Finland. His story has also been adapted into a movie and TV series. Television rights to the original Finnish series have been sold in Russia, and Nykänen has also received interest in television remake rights from the U.S. His newer Ariel Kafka series, starring a cool-headed policeman who is also a member of Helsinki’s Jewish community, has received praise in international press. Drawing from current events, the series is firmly rooted in the streets of the Finnish capital. In his latest standalone novel, To Earth Again (Mullasta maan, CrimeTime 2014), a crime story set in Northern Finland, he delves into “Arctic Noir.”


Miika Nousiainen

Miika Nousiainen writes sharp, gentle and often tragicomical novels about surprising themes like long-distance running, the desire to be Swedish, and dentistry. He works as a journalist and writes also for television.


Saara Turunen

Saara Turunen is an internationally acclaimed award-winning author, playwright and director. She is known for her bold and direct style and much of her work examines the themes of identity and social norms. Her forthcoming novel Irrational Things (Spring 2021) is a story of love, death and life between two countries.

Turunen has previously authored two highly acclaimed novels, Love/Monster 2015 and The Bystander 2018. Her debut novel Love/Monster won the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize in 2015. In addition to her work as a novelist, Turunen is also known for her plays. They have been translated into 13 languages and performed all around the world. Turunen was granted with the Finland Prize in 2016, a high profile award given by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, and with the City of Helsinki’s The Artist of the Year Award in 2018.

 

Author photo (c) Ilkka Saastamoinen


Max Seeck, New York Times Best Selling Author

Max Seeck is the New York Times Bestselling Author of THE WITCH HUNTER.  “Another star has been added to the firmament of thriller writers,” announced Iltalehti newspaper, when Max’s debut novel was published in 2016. Four years and four books later, Max Seeck’s novels have been sold to more than 40 countries, including US, UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Nordic countries and as far as Korea!

His debut trilogy following protagonist Daniel Kuisma sold over 40,000 copies in Finland. His new Jessica Niemi series landed him on the New York Times Bestseller list! In Faithful Reader, AKA The Witch Hunter (US title), book 1 of the Jessica Niemi series, Helsinki Police Detective Jessica Niemi hunts an occultist serial killer. In Evil’s Net, AKA Ice Coven, Jessica and her team follow clues hidden on Instagram to solve the disappearance of a young influencer and a manga artist.


Max Seeck has a background in sales and marketing, and has lately been able to dedicate his time to his lifelong love of writing. His interests include well-conducted research, reading Nordic Noir and listening to movie soundtracks as he writes.


Jussi Valtonen

Jussi Valtonen (b. 1974) is an author and psychologist from Helsinki. He has studied neuropsychology in the United States and screenwriting in the UK, and has also worked as a science reporter. He has written three novels and a short story collection.

Carried by Wings (Siipien kantamat, Tammi 2007) was given second place in Bonnier’s novel competition, and received a warm reception from both critics and bloggers. In 2014 Valtonen was awarded the Finlandia Prize, the country’s highest-profile literary award, for They Know Not What They Do (He eivät tiedä mitä tekevät, Tammi 2014).


Jyrki Vainonen

Jyrki Vainonen (b. 1963) is an award-winning Finnish author who is renowned for his Finnish translations of the works of Seamus Heaney, Jonathan Swift and William Shakespeare. His debut work, collection of short stories (Tutkimusmatkailija ja muita tarinoita, Loki-kirjat 1999 ) Vainonen received the Helsingin Sanomat Debut Book of the Year Award in 1999. Vainonen has lived in Ireland and wrote his licentiate thesis on Jonathan Swift’s Irish pamphlets.

“Vainonen, an award winner in his native Finland, debuts in English with seven selections from three of his previous collections, introduced by Finnish fantasy powerhouse Johanna Sinisalo. Opening with the absurd—a husband vanishes on an ill-fated expedition into his unfaithful wife’s thigh in “The Explorer”—the book then delves into questions of identity (“Blueberries”) and transformation (“The Aquarium”). Sex is mutable (“The Pearl”) and comforting truths are revealed to be false, while faint suspicions prove terribly true (“The Refrigerator”). The author shows an easy comfort with the odd and disturbing, and sympathy even with his less sympathetic protagonists. The translators have done a masterful job of presenting his work with clarity. The one shortcoming of the collection is its brevity; at a scant hundred pages it seems too short to function as a proper introduction to the author. (Oct.)”