SOL Centre home to four August Prize authors

The Centre for Languages and Literature is inspiring. So says Amanda Svensson, who is one of four people at the centre who have won or been nominated for an August Prize: “Writing is a lonely business and it is fun to be in an environment where people share your interests.”

There are currently four authors working or studying at Lund University’s Centre for Languages and Literature (SOL) who have won or been nominated for an August Prize. Besides Amanda Svensson, this year’s winner of the Little August Prize, Cathrine Bengtsson, studies languages at SOL and former prize winners Sigrid Combüchen and Stefan Casta teach Creative Writing.

When LUM met Amanda Svensson one morning at the end of November, she said that her own book Hey Dolly was on the reading list when she started studying third-semester Comparative Literature this autumn. The book was taken off the list at her request:

“It would have been uncomfortable both for me and for the other students to analyse my book if I was there”, she says.

She has to think before answering the question of how long she has been studying in Lund. Two and a half years in total, she works out, but not consecutively. Sometimes, when she has been writing intensively, her studies have been put on the shelf.

“I do things a bit backwards. First I get myself a profession and then I scrape together the credits for a BA!”

The academic credits are good to be able to fall back on, she says, but Amanda Svensson is first and foremost after the learning that she thinks university can give her.

“For me, it is very important to read other authors”, she says. “I have always been a bookworm, but reading literature in a structured way at university is something quite different.”

Amanda Svensson’s autumn has been broken up by her book release with associated marketing and lectures around the country. Therefore she hasn’t really got started on her degree project, which will be about the American author Thomas Pynchon. In the spring she intends to read French.

It was Karin Nykvist, director of studies for Comparative Literature and arts writer for Sydsvenskan, who pointed out that there are currently four authors at SOL who have either received or been nominated for an August Prize.

“Of course we can’t take the credit for the authors’ work, but we can take the credit that they are happy here and want to be here”, says Karin Nykvist. “For those of us who work or study here, it is obviously inspiring to have these people among us.”

Karin Nykvist thinks today’s students are more creative and more have their sights set on writing their own material than students in her undergraduate days. Then students wanted to be teachers – now they want to develop their writing and become arts writers or authors.

People often complain about students’ poor prior knowledge, and Karin Nykvist agrees that the students do not have as much subject knowledge as in the past. However, she thinks they are more alert, creative and daring, and have a much better writing ability than in the past. They have their own voice and are good at expressing themselves, she says.

She is also impressed by the cultural activities among the students at SOL – talks by authors, poetry readings, drama and film are just a few examples of activities organised by the students. She believes gathering the activities of the centre under one roof has played a very important role.

August Prize winners/nominees at SOL Centre

Amanda Svensson, Comparative Literature student, nominated for Little August Prize 2004 and August Prize 2011

Sigrid Combüchen, lecturer in Creative Writing, August Prize winner 2010

Cathrine Bengtsson, Education student, Little August Prize winner 2011

Stefan Casta, lecturer in Creative Writing, August Prize winner children’s literature 1999

- Ulrika Oredsson

Photo caption: Amanda Svensson has been nominated for an August Prize twice and is currently studying Comparative Literature. Photo: Gunnar Menander