Linn Ullmann

Linn Ullmann (born Oslo, 1966) is a Norwegian author and journalist, the daughter of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman and Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann. She is known as a novelist, literary critic and columnist, and her work has been read both in Norway and abroad. Her writing matters because it links a family tradition rooted in European art cinema with a quiet, introspective prose about family, memory and loss.

She grew up between New York City and Oslo. As a child she acted in four films, among them Cries and Whispers (1972) and Autumn Sonata (1978), both directed by her father. At fifteen she was asked to leave the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, where she had been training as a dancer. She later attended the Juilliard School and graduated in English literature from New York University, where she began work on a PhD.

Her literary career began in 1998 with Before You Sleep, by which time she was already an influential critic. Stella Descending (2001) and Grace (2002) followed, and Grace won the Norwegian Readers' Prize. Her novels move with a restrained tone around guilt, family ties and the weight of the past. A Blessed Child appeared in 2005 and The Cold Song in 2011. Alongside her fiction she writes a column for Norway's leading morning newspaper, and in 2007 she received the Gold Pen for her journalism.

In 2009 she co-founded The Bergman Estate on Fårö, an international artist residency foundation, and later served as its artistic director. Her novels have been published across Europe and the United States and translated into around thirty languages, which gives her a strong international profile among Norwegian narrative writers.