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íslenska

Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

Bio

Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir was born in Reykjavík in 1958. She was a lecturer of art history and -theory at the University of Iceland and has also taught art history elsewhere. For some time she was the director of the University of Iceland's Art Museum. Auður Ava has also been a curator and has written about art and art theory in newspapers and magazines.

Aður Ava's first published work of fiction was the novel Upphækkuð jörð (Elevetated Ground) in 1998. Her second novel, Rigning í nóvember (Butterflies in November) came out in 2004, followed by Afleggjarinn (Rosa Candida) in 2007. Auður sent forward her first book of poetry, Sálmurinn um glimmer (Hymn on Glimmer) in 2010.

Auður Ava has received numerous recognition for her work, both at home and abroad. Rigning í nóvember won the Tómas Guðmundsson Literature Prize in 2004 and was also nominated for the DV Cultural Prize for Literature. Afleggjarinn (Rosa Candida) received the latter award in 2008, as well as the Icelandic Women's Literature Prize and was nominated for the Nordic Council's Literature Prize in 2009. The novel gained much attention in France after its publication there in 2010, and also won an award in Québec in Canada in the spring of 2011. In 2019, Auður Ava received the Nordic Council's Literature Prize for her novel Ör (Hotel Silence) and in 2019, Eric Boury's French translation of her novel Ungfrú Ísland (Miss Iceland) won the prestigeous Médici Prize for translated fiction.