International Authors' Stage: Geir Gulliksen (NO)

Geir Gulliksen is one of the North's most recognised contemporary authors, and his writing revolves around the big existential and societal questions: power relations, gender roles and identity. His most recent novel is Øvre port, nedre port.

A milestone in autofiction literature

Gulliksen has been publishing books since 1986, but his international breakthrough came with the controversial divorce novel Story of a Marriage (2015), which was nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. The novel sparked a wide-ranging debate about the boundaries between reality and fiction and became a milestone in autofiction literature.
In Norway, the book became part of the discussion about 'realistic literature', where Gulliksen was accused of getting too close to real people in his depictions of relationships. The debate also spread to Denmark, where autofiction is a controversial genre - how close can an author allow himself to get to reality?

The man's fragility

In 2023, Gulliksen published the critically acclaimed essay collection If I Were a Man: On Gender and Love, in which he explores the fragility of masculinity and the narrow gender roles that still characterise society. He asks the question: Why is it so difficult for men to break with traditional masculinity norms? With a sharp, curious and self-critical eye, he delves into topics such as fatherhood, female role models and the importance of feminism in a man's life.
The paradoxes of masculinity become clear when Gulliksen draws major social themes down to recognisable everyday situations: Why do many men insist on being behind the wheel? And why does a man instinctively react with anger when he experiences adversity? The only explanation Gulliksen himself can come up with is that it says something about how vulnerable the masculine actually is.

The editor behind world-renowned Norwegian authors

Alongside his writing, Geir Gulliksen has worked as a publishing editor at Tiden Norsk Forlag and has been editor in chief at Forlaget Oktober since 2000. Here he has been a crucial figure in the development of the autofiction genre as editor for some of the other great Norwegian authors, such as Linn Ullmann and Karl Ove Knausgård.

Gulliksen represents a new wave of Nordic thinkers and artists who have a progressive view of gender roles and representation. One of the other prominent figures in this movement is the Palme d'Or-winning Norwegian film director Dag Johan Hagerud, known for his trilogy Sex, Dreams, Love, in which he similarly explores gender, identity and power relations.

Participants

Geir Gulliksen

Geir Gulliksen is a writer and editor at the Norwegian publishing house Oktober. He debuted in 1986 and has since published novels, poems, essays and children's books. His big breakthrough was the novel Story of a Marriage, which earned him a nomination for the Nordic Council Literature Prize.

Lise Bach Hansen

Lise Bach Hansen is the head of the Talks and Literature stage at the Black Diamond. In her work, she explores the connection between art, culture, politics and democracy – often with a Nordic focus. She is co-author of several books, such as Set the Scene: The Art of Curating Live Events.