Author Nominee: Iceland

Guðrún Helgadóttir
Iceland, Author

One of ten children, Guðrún Helgadóttir was born in Hafnarfjörður, a small town near Reykjavík in 1935. On graduating from Reykjavík Grammar School she worked as a secretary and as a department manager at the National Health and Insurance Office. Subsequently she entered politics, representing the People's Alliance on Reykjavík City Council, and as a member of the Icelandic legislative assembly. From 1988 to 1991 she was Speaker of the Athling, the first woman to hold that position.

Helgadóttir's first book and the first in a series about scheming twin brothers, Jón Oddur og Jón Bjarni was published in 1974. A film based on the series was released in 1981. She writes mainly for 7-13-year-old readers, but has also published a few illustrated books for younger readers, a stage play, an adult novel and a television play for adults.

Guðrún Helgadóttir's strength as a writer is recognised as the ease with which she can convincingly describe the feelings of both adults and children. She also has the ability to depict the comic momentum of everyday life. Writing on www.literature.is, Margrét Tryggvadóttir says: 'One of Helgadóttir's distinctive features as an author is the child's point of view. She has the ability to be able to place herself in the shoes of a child and show the world as it sees it. The child's vision is always fresh and thus her work ages so well. There is often a delightful discrepancy between what the children in the stories feel and reality.'

There is a strong social impetus in her writing, carrying over from her work in parliament where she was involved in a successful fight to get a special representative for children who assists them in claiming their rights. In her books, she often shows adults treating children with disrespect, or punishing them unreasonably for trivial misdemeanours.

Helgadóttir has written nineteen books for children. Twelve of these have been translated into various languages and she has received many awards for her writing, both in Iceland and abroad.