English
Rune F. Hjemås was born in Trondheim, Norway in 1982. He is the author of seven books of fiction, as well as the editor of several anthologies. He has also written essays, critisism and journalistic texts for various newspapers, blogs and magazines, and is one of the two founding editors of the small press Beijing Trondheim.
Hjemås’ first book was publised in 2008, a collection of short prose called I am not afraid, I am not afraid. The book was well received and praised by critics for its sensibility, observations and humor. One year later saw the release of his second book, a short story collecion called Indians. In 2012, Hjemås published his first volume of poems, It is not spring, it is global warming. The poems revolve around the paradoxical wanderlust of a young person who is aware that his traveling also harms the environment. In a narrative style, using modern classical music as a recurring point of reference, Hjemås writes about the relationship between humans and nature, as well as love, death and coming of age.
One small step for man was Hjemås’ fourth book, published in 2016, and is described as a kind of photo book without the photos. It consists of 62 short prose texts, inspired by the way we document our lives using different types of cameras, smart phones and social media platforms. In 2018, Hjemås’ first novel, Aurora, was published. The novel is set to Iceland during the financial meltdown in 2009, and follows a couple of young persons through that year.
In 2021, Hjemås was picked out as one of six participants at the Norwegian Drama Festival with his monologue This is my mother tongue. He also published his first book for younger readers, A brother in outher space, as well as a new collection of short stories titled Climate changes.
In addition to his own writing, Hjemås frequently gives classes in creative writing for young people. He is also a translator, and co-edited in 2018 an anthology of new American poetry translated to Norwegian with Mathias R. Samuelsen. He has recently translated Thalia Field’s Bird Lovers, Backyard and Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous to Norwegian.
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Text samples in English
︎ Excerpts from One small step for man.
︎ sleeping on thin ice (a suite of poems written in 2011, for a shelved anthology on the polar bear)
︎ A More Sustainable One︎︎︎ (essay on Norwegian politics of literature)
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