Author Spotlight Q&A: Rune Christiansen
For today’s Author Spotlight Q&A, we are featuring Rune Christiansen, author of Fanny and the Mystery in the Grieving Forest and The Loneliness in Lydia Erneman’s Life.
B*: What does being part of the Book*hug author family mean to you?
RC: I am very happy to be published by Book*hug. It is a privilege for me that they want to publish my novels. From the very beginning, I have been met with commitment and enthusiasm. And I find that Book*hug is a publisher with a conscious relationship to what literature can be. I was also lucky enough to launch the novel Fanny and the Mystery in the Grieving Forest in Toronto and in Thunder Bay. It was a generous and memorable meeting with the publishers and with other colleagues connected to Book*hug.
B*: Can you share another title from the Book*hug catalogue that has left a lasting impression on you as a reader?
RC: There are quite a few books from Book*hug that I have read with great interest and pleasure, but let me single out two: Aimee Wall’s We, Jane and Moez Surani’s Are the Rivers in Your Poems Real. The latter, I have just published here in Norway, in its entirety, in a series of contemporary poetry that I am editing. I follow both of these authors with great attention.
B*: When we see more large publisher consolidations and huge conglomerates dominating the marketplace, what does it mean to you to be published by an independent publisher like Book*hug Press?
RC: It has always been important to me to be at a publishing house that focuses on quality over quantity. This is how it was when I came to Forlaget Oktober here in Norway. It was a small publishing house with great attention to quality fiction. Now, they have of course grown, but always on the premises of literature by attracting the most important authors here in Norway. I find that Book*hug and Forlaget Oktober have many similarities.
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Rune Christiansen is a Norwegian poet and novelist. One of Norway’s most important literary writers, he is the author of more than 20 books of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. He has won many prestigious awards, including the 2014 Brage Prize for his bestselling novel, The Loneliness in Lydia Erneman’s Life. Fanny and the Mystery in the Grieving Forest was shortlisted for the same prize and published in English by Book*hug Press in 2019. He is also a professor of creative writing. Christiansen lives just outside of Oslo, Norway.
