Steinunn G. Helgadottir

(b.1952) is a visual artist and well-known Icelandic poet and prose writer. She received The Icelandic Women’s Literature Prize 2016 for her novel Voices From the Radio Operator’s House. Helgadottir’s work has been exhibited at solo and group art exhibitions around the world. She has also curated numerous art exhibitions in several museums and galleries in Iceland. Steinunn G. Helgadottir’s story-telling talent is undisputed. Readers who‘ve discovered Voices from the Radio Operator’s House and All My Father’s Children know well the feeling of laughing one page and weeping the next, and accidentally staying up far too late reading.

… at the back of my mind, while writing this book, I had the thought that people are always searching for something. It's a collective search and many of us do not even know what we are searching for. You can call it a father or a mother. It does not matter. What really matters is the need and the search. In this search you need there to be something in front of you other than the void. Take Janus for example; he is frightened of the open sky and finds it difficult to look up into it. It is a terrifying thought how empty space is while at the same time it is full of things unknown to us.

interviewed by Magnus Gudmundsson, Frettabladid daily