Katarina von Bredow was born in 1967 in Aneby, a small village in Småland in the south-east of Sweden. At the age of 17 she made her sensational literary debut with the highly appreciated Syskonkärlek and she is now a professional author. Katarina vo ...
Katarina von Bredow was born in 1967 in Aneby, a small village in Småland in the south-east of Sweden. At the age of 17 she made her sensational literary debut with the highly appreciated Syskonkärlek and she is now a professional author. Katarina von Bredow writes books for teenagers and for children. She writes about love and strong desire, often forbidden and painful, as well as magnificent.
"People ask me why I started writing. But I don't know the answer. The question seems wrongly put. The real question is maybe not why some people start but why most people stop. I learnt the letters, thought they where unusually smart and useful little doodles and started putting stories together. I also illustrated them. The other children at the day nursery did the same thing. A couple of years later most of them stopped, but I didn't. Maybe it's like the Swedish poet Lars Forssell once said, 'the fontanels never close on artists'. Letters become words, and with them you can keep yourself occupied forever. You take a couple of words and twist and turn them until all the words are in the right places and the right way around. And then you take some more words and continue. Another reason for writing is the people you write about. To get to be close to them, inside of them, to go through agonies and to laugh with them. To make love to them. I write about love and desire. But also about loneliness and friendship. Subjects that are as inexhaustible as the combination of words. Subjects that almost all authors through the ages have written about, but about which there is still so much to write. Once I heard a child psychologist answer the question why children stick green peas and other small things up their noses. She said that they stick green peas up their noses because it is possible. I write. Because it is possible."
List of Publications – A Selection
Syskonkärlek/Sibling Love 1991
Kattskorpor/Cat Rusks 1994
Knappt lovlig/Hardly Permissible 1996
Som om ingenting/As if Nothing 1999
Hur man gömmer en mammut/How to Hide a Mammoth 2001
Ett magiskt misstag/A Magical Mistake 2002
Hur kär får man bli?/In Love, but how Much? 2004
Expert på att rodna/Expert at Blushing 2005
Awards
The Buxtehuder Bulle
The Junge-Jugendbuch-Jury prize
The magazine Eselohrs's prize Die Eule des Monats
Nominated for the Deutschen Jugendliteraturpreis in 1994