MATS STRANDBERG, Guest of honor, Sweden
Mats Strandberg has always loved horror. As a kid, he preferred the Grimm fairytales over the Disney versions, and when he was ten years old he discovered Stephen King.
His break-through came with the YA trilogy about The Circle, where a group of young women find out that they are witches, chosen to stop the apocalypse.
Since then, he has made a name for himself as one of the most prolific Nordic genre writers, with books translated into 25+ languages. The movie adaptation of his slasher novel “The Conference” was released by Netflix in October 2023 and became number one on their global chart. Blood Cruise (Färjan) and The Home (Hemmet) have also been adapted to a tv show and a movie respectively.
Mats has also written children’s books, stage plays and movie scripts.
JOHANNA SINISALO, Guest of honor, Finland
Johanna Sinisalo has wanted to be a writer of speculative fiction since she read ”Comet in Moominland” in the mature age of five.
Now she has eleven novels, two short prose collections and a novel for children under her belt, as well as some shiny things like the Finlandia Prize and the James Tiptree, Jr. Award.
Sinisalo’s writing has been translated into more than twenty languages, including Danish (four titles this far) and she has edited The Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy, an English anthology of Finnish speculative fiction.
Sinisalo works also as a screenwriter, and her most known spe-fi work is the original story for the 2012 cult SF comedy movie Iron Sky.
AKSEL STUDSGARTH, Guest of honor, Denmark
Originally trained as a designer in London, Aksel Studsgarth worked for many years in the animation and movie industry.
During this period, he enjoyed the highs and lows of co-founding a reasonably successful visual effects studio, from drinking champagne on a yacht in Cannes to unblocking a toilet with a folded shoebox lid.
Today, he mostly writes books and comics that transport you into the dark, the peculiar, and the supernatural.
His graphic novel, Alva in The Dark, with art by Daniel Hansen, has won several awards and has been published in five languages, including Mandarin allegedly.