Pettersson realized that there aren’t many opportunities for English-language writers, editors, and agents to meet up in Sweden, where she moved to from Chicago twenty years ago, so she decided to create her own. She launched the Stockholm Writers’ Festival, a three-day conference to help emerging authors on their way to publication, including through a literary prize for unpublished writers.
She gets her inspiration from similar events she has attended. “I am someone who understands that as a writer getting inside the system is really tough, and festivals and workshops and events really help a lot,” she explains. “They give you contacts, they give you the craft, they put you in touch with your people, so to speak. I feel like I’ve grown so much over the years just by attending festivals.”
But she always had to travel to attend these events: “The idea for me was: ‘why do I have to keep travelling?’ I was going to the US, attended a wonderful Midwest Writers’ Workshop, which we modelled a lot of this event on, and I’ll continue to travel to it, but I thought there should be something in this market, of all the markets, given how bilingual Sweden is.”
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