In February 2023, the leading Icelandic writer Gerður Kristný was a resident in Košice. Gerður is best known as a poet and author of books for children and youth. Her mysterious book for young people, Shadows in the Chair, was published in Slovak last year by BRAK, translated by Ján Zat’ek. During her residency in Košice, Gerður is working on new poems that explore themes of female experience in myth, religion and history.
Gerður Kristný is one of Iceland’s leading contemporary writers and creators of literature. Over the past two decades, she has published a range of works, from journalistic work to nine collections of poetry that have been translated into several languages. Gerður won the Icelandic Literary Prize for her poetry cycle Blóðhófnir (‘Little Blood’) – a modern retelling of Norse myths – and was also nominated for the prestigious Nordic Council Literary Award. Blóðhófnir was first published in 2010 and together with her two subsequent collections, Drápa – A Reykjavík Murder Mystery (2014) and Reykjavík Requiem (2018), forms a trilogy of poems about gender-based violence. In 2022, Gerður Kristný was awarded the Order of the Icelandic Falcon for services to Icelandic literature and culture.
