Anna-Karin Palm

Anna-Karin Palm (born 17 March 1961) is a Swedish author and multiple award winner for culture writing. In May 2023, Palm was appointed to the Swedish Academy as a new member on chair number 16, assuming this position on 20 December 2023.

Background Palm grew up in Stockholm with a half-brother and a sister. Her mother trained as a doctor and her father studied engineering at Hermods.

After twelve years at the Waldorf school, Palm continued at Stockholm University with literature, philosophy and English and began PhD studies in literature at Uppsala University. For a time she was part of the editorial staff for 80s /90s, a Swedish literary magazine, and debuted in 1991 with her first novel Faunen. She has also worked, among other things, as a postal worker, cashier and reader of books for the visually impaired.

Authorship Palm was first published in Novella 85, an anthology featuring contributions by debut authors. Then came another short story (1989) in the magazine 80s. Her debut novel Faunen received a very positive reception.

The essay book On Friendship (2007) was written by Palm together with friend, writer and philosopher Kate Larson; they are associative, personally reflective texts around varying themes, and the form of dialogic essay was invented by the friends together.

The novel Snow Angel (2011) moves between a small French village in the 21st century and Stockholm in the winter of 1985–1986. Questions of memory, language, history and identity are important, where realism is combined with fairy tales and allows the distance between places and times to illuminate each other. Palm's texts are characterized by strong female subjects and an interest in the human interior. In the novels, there is often a strong epic drive, a preference for multiple timelines or narrative voices and a clear awareness of form.

The short story collection Hunting Luck from 2014 revolves around the female body and explores sexuality, motherhood, illness and aging in a series of short stories. Åsa Beckman wrote in Dagens Nyheter about "a nice portrayal, where Palm shows how the characters get hurt in small and big ways because they didn't really include the body in their self".

In 2019, Palm's biography of Selma Lagerlöf, I want to set the world in motion, was published. The book was nominated for the August Prize for best non-fiction book, Dagens Nyheter's culture prize and the non-fiction book of the year, and was awarded the Lotten von Kraemer prize from the Society of the Nine.

Family Palm is married and has a daughter.

Selected awards and honors 1993 – Albert Bonnier's scholarship fund for younger and newer writers 1998 – Society De Nios Special Prize 2015 – De Nios Winter Prize 2019 – Lotten von Kræmer prize 2022 – Dobloug Prize 2023 – Lifetime appointment to the Royal Swedish Academy