Claes Holmström: Tredje stenen från solen (The Third Rock from the Sun)
The information on Claes Holmström provided by his publishers is highly Stockholm-centric. Born: Stockholm, December 1966. Grown up: in Stockholm. Lives: in Stockholm. Education: dropped out of a university course in cultural studies. In common with some of the other featured ‘new writers’ he has worked as a postman, to which he added a spell as a janitor in the 1980s. His debut came in 1994 with Tredje stenen från solen, followed two years later by Startpistolen (Starting Pistol). He cites his ambitions as "fulfilling my slacker ambitions, publishing a monotonous 500-page account every three years of countless visits to McDonald’s. Then, after twenty years, suddenly being recognized as an independent-minded member of the cultural elite…" Holmström describes his novel as an account of contemporary life that will either endure or quickly be forgotten, "in which case it wasn’t a good book." In the meantime he remains a therapy junkie, eating Cipramil and waiting for "something to happen…"

Kjell Westö: Drakarna över Helsingfors (Kites over Helsingfors)
Born in Helsinki in 1961, Kjell Westö’s debut was in 1986 with Tango Orange, a book of poetry that combined imaginative thought with reflections on social responsibility. He spent the greater part of the 1980s working as a journalist. The experience seems to have been a formative one, at least politically; he once commented that he should like to write "an elegy for a lost generation." His view of the 1980s is that they created a political and cultural vacuum for its young: a world without any solid foundations. This preoccupation is very much reflected in his epic treatment of a huge gallery of characters in Drakarna över Helsingfors. In the children we see a Homeric nobility, but as they grow older they are shown in debased form, products of an intensely commercial era. Yet there is not sadness alone, but also a deep, almost sentimental love of Helsinki in all of its guises. Westö’s books have been published in Sweden as well as Finland. His short story collections – including Utslag (Rash), winner of the Finlandia Prize – are also published in Finnish.

Johanna Nilsson: Hon går genom tavlan, ut ur bilden (She Walks Through the Painting, out of the Picture)
Like many of the writers publishing first novels in Swedish, Johanna Nilsson was shockingly young (just twenty-three) when she published Hon går genom tavlan, ut ur bilden (1996). Accordingly, her biographical details read more or less like any other undergraduate: likes sport, wants to travel, etc. However, the remarkable thing about Johanna Nilsson is the way she burst onto the scene – like a perfect butterfly from the pupa – with an assured and well-structured first novel. Potentially, it delivered a direct hit at the cherished cult of Scandinavian childhood celebrated in the works of writers like Astrid Lindgren; but Nilsson never resorted to the cynic’s easy path. Frustrated love and longing are always bubbling in her novel, never far beneath the surface. Reviewed in Arbetet, her debut was described as "the best novel of its kind of the decade". Nilsson recently published her second novel, Flickan som uppfann livet (The Girl Who Discovered Life), also this a story of the child. At the end of it all, one finds oneself asking a question: is it really possible for children to be as nasty as this?