English info

Steinunn Ásmundsdóttir

Icelandic writer/poet/journalist

About

Steinunn Ásmundsdóttir writer, poet & journalist was born in 1966 in Reykjavik, Iceland. The years between 1984 and 1996 were mostly dedicated to writing poetry, journalism, nature conservation/rangering and globetrotting.

She moved to East Iceland in 1996 to be closer to nature, founded a family and lived in the east for over twenty years. In East Iceland she worked as a journalist and photographer for the newspaper Morgunblaðið (www.mbl.is) for a decade and as an editor of the Austurglugginn (www.austurfrett.is) local weekly newspaper & web for several years. In this period she didn´t write but very little
else than news, interviews and commentators.

In 2011 she decided to put the brakes down; jump of the busy life ,hamster-wheel´ and aim for a life that could be more introvert and observant, and to focus on writing her own literature again.
In 2016 Steinunn established her own literature and publication website; http://www.ordlist.is. Orðlist (e. art of words) includes over two hundred poems dated from 1980 till now, translations of her poetry mainly in English and Spanish, as well as novels, shortstories, articles, interviews and reflections.

Since 2017, six books by Steinunn have been published, four books of poetry, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2023, and two novels, 2018 and 2022.
Three books of poetry were published earlier, 1989, 1992 & 1996. She is currently working on a new novel and the biography of a well-known Icelandic naturalist.

Steinunn now lives in Reykjavík, works as a journalist besides her writing and is the proud mother of two wonderful young people.
Steinunn is a member of The Writers‘ Union of Iceland (www.rsi.is) since 1992, and Le Droit Humain (www.ledroithumain.is) since 2015.

Recent

Ástarsaga (Love Story)

A French photographer and a young Icelandic woman fall madly in love. A classic story, yet completely unexpected during the backdrop of Cold War politics. Their passion ignited the weekend that Ronald Reagan, the President of the United States and Michail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, met at Höfði in Reykjavík, Iceland, in the fall of 1986.

It is the story of a wild romance, of that which could have been, a battle between the superpowers and how the meeting in Reykjavík changed the world and these lovers‘ lives. The ways in which this meeting created turmoil and turned life upside down in Reykjavik is shocking even forty years later. It was the time of corded landline phones and typewriters, restraints, prejudice and rigid nationalism, heightened by the Cold War and the race to the moon.

Their love story is a journey through time and shows how history repeats itself again and again.

A fascinating adventure by an acclaimed author of six books of poetry and a creative non-fiction book, Manneskjusögu or A Girls Tale (as it has been translated to English), which was published in 2018 and received rave reviews.