Mark your calendars and save the date now! As part of our efforts to provide move events for our writing community throughout the year, the Stockholm Writers Festival will be participating in this year's Stockholm Bokhelg Festival weekend.

We'll even be hosting a workshop and author event on May 21, from 15:00 to 18:00 at Brunkebergstorg 4, in Hobo Hotel's Book Cafe. The cafe is up one flight of stairs from the lobby. If the address sounds familiar, it's because it's conveniently located right next door to the SWF22 Festival Venue. So, take the opportunity to check out the Bookhelg workshops with us, and then scope out the venue for the festival next door, at the At Six Hotel.

During our Bokhelg event, we'll do "writing sprints" where we work on our manuscripts together, and then during breaks, we'll get to hear from select authors, one of whom is Sara Hammarkrantz.

Sara is a journalist and author of fiction and non-fiction, including her first novel released in October. You can read all about Sara’s work on her website (in Swedish) but we’ve included a rough translation of the story behind her latest book below.

More than five years ago, Cristina Tscherning, a conversational therapist in psychosynthesis, contacted Sara, asking if she would write about her life. She needed a witness - someone that would believe all of the her adult memories of traumatic events that happened to her.

Book Cover - Cristina, din vilja bor i skogen

Together they retrace her life through memory, from Stockholm Sweden, to Panama City, and Bogota, Columbia. It's a true story that is more painfully dizzying than one could imagine. It has not been an easy life. Cristina has run furiously fast, building herself a fortress to shut out the dark shadows that her past casts. But when she burns out, she begins to question her hot pursuit and at the age of 40, she manages to get her mother to tell her who her father is. Suddenly her memories come flooding back to the surface, demanding to be brought forth and examined.

After several years of work on this book, Sara shared it with a publisher that responded with an unexpected direction to turn this book intended to be a psychological self help book, into a novel.

Sara had to contend with new ideas - where is the line between reality and fiction? She decided it is everywhere, in every sentence she had not personally heard, and with every person that is now deceased, and in every place she had not visited, but also in the places that she did visit and with the people that she was able to meet.

Sara took the challenge, and in doing so has embroidered, and filled the story with flesh and blood but at the same time remained faithful to the truth. The book Cristina, din vilja lever i skogen (Cristina, your will lives in the forest) was released in October of 2021.

Meet and work with Sara at the SWF Bokhelg event on May 21st, and check out all the other book events around the city. Be sure to check out the Stockholm Bokhelg website for more information and follow the Stockholm Bokhelg Page on Facebook for updates.

SWF, Stockholm Bokhelg and Sara Hammarkrantz