Congratulations!

Author Anja Snellman celebrated her 70th birthday on May 23, 2024. “I feel quite ageless,” Snellman says. “I don’t know what I should be like as a seventy-year-old, and to be honest, I’m not that interested in knowing. I don’t think about age, not my own or that of others.” She thinks people should have “lifelong curiosity”:  a life story doesn’t need to be predictable. You can always change plans and direction. Continue >>

Poetic license

Play, With Knives, the debut novel of Jeanette Horn, was published in March 2025. A graduate of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Horn is grounded in poetry.  This background is reflected in her “exquisite prose”: precise, lyrical, reformed. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and dogs. Her father emigrated from Helsinki at age twenty-five to pursue a Ph.D. in physics at the University of Chicago. Continue >>

The Penguin Lessons

In spring 2025, Anja Snellman curated a lineup of compelling new films for her local movie theater, Kino Konepaja in Helsinki. The series ended with The Penguin Lessons in May, a month before its official premiere in Finland. The movie is based on an autobiographical novel of the same name by Tom Michell. Steve Coogan plays Michell, a British teacher who has moved to Argentina to teach at a boarding school. Continue >>

 Age is a word

In the latest issue of the Union of Finnish Writers' magazine, author Anja Snellman answers a question rarely asked: How does it feel like to be a seventy-something author in 2025? Dynamic, active old age is a new phase of life that follows late middle age—a confusing and perhaps even frightening cultural shift that we’re still struggling to understand, let alone put into words. How can we bring generations of writers closer together? Continue >>