Join us on March 5 for a virtual book talk with Danish author Stine Pilgaard and translator Hunter Simpson to celebrate the release of The Land of Short Sentences, out March 1 from World Editions!
A young woman relocates to an outlying community in West Jutland, Denmark, and is forced to find her way, not only in the bewildering environment of the residential Folk High School where her partner has been hired to teach, but also in the inscrutable conversational forms of the local population. And on top of it all there’s the small matter of juggling her roles as mother to a newborn baby and advice columnist in the local newspaper. In this understated and hilarious novel, Stine Pilgaard conjures a tale of venturing into new and uncharted land, of human relationships, dilemmas, and the ways and byways of social intercourse.
In today’s event, Pilgaard & Simpson will discuss the writing and translation of the book, hailed as “a deliciously crumbly novel oozing with awkward love” (Weekendavisen)
This event will take place as a Zoom webinar; please ask questions in the chat or send them in advance to info@amscan.org. Registration is required; please sign up at the link above. This conversation will be recorded and available later to stream on our Virtual Programming page and on our YouTube channel.
About the Author & Translator
Stine Pilgaard is a graduate of the Danish Writers’ Academy and the University of Copenhagen. Her first novel, Min mor siger (“My Mom Says”), was a critical and commercial success, earning a nomination for the prestigious Danish Broadcasting Corporation Literature Prize and securing its author the Bodil and Jørgen Munch-Christensen Award for a debut author. In 2016, Pilgaard received the Danish Libraries’ Writers Award and was nominated for the Danish Readers’ Book Award for Lejlighedssange (“Songs for Special Occasions”). The Land of Short Sentences was an instant bestseller in Denmark, where it was released to critical acclaim. Pilgaard hails from the city of Aarhus and lives in Velling, an outlying rural community close to Ringkøbing in Jutland, Denmark.
Hunter Simpson is originally from North Carolina and lives in Copenhagen, Denmark. Stine Pilgaard’s The Land of Short Sentences (World Editions, 2022) was his first published literary translation and won ASF’s Leif and Inger Sjöberg Translation Prize 2021. My Mother Says is his second published translation.