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 >>

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 >>

The fourth sister

Anton Chekhov wrote Three Sisters in 1900, and the play was first performed at the Moscow Art Theater in 1901. “Sometimes I look around and feel like the fourth sister. The one Chekhov feared a little. The one he could never figure out. The one he never wrote about. Today, in the checkout line at the grocery store, I heard someone say: a shallow abyss. I thought of Olga, Masha, and Irina,” writes Anja Snellman. Continue >>

Gracefully alert

What do artist Susanna Kaapu and Anja Snellman have in common? A fascination with deer, to begin with: their graceful alertness, constant vigilance, and instinctive readiness to react in less than a heartbeat. Like Snellman, Kaapu is a highly sensitive person. “Through deer, I can best express my sensitivity and longing for a comforting, gentle gaze. I’m easily scared, yet cautiously curious about the world.” Continue >>