Eva Apelqvist is the author of the Swedish-language skateboard mystery Mörker över skateparken (2022 Swedish Mystery Academy Award for best mystery for children and young adults),  Swede Dreams, LGBTQ FAMILIES: The Ultimate Teen Guide, and Getting Ready to Drive: A How To Guide in English, and the translator from Swedish into English of 2024 Michael L. Printz Honor Book for YA readers, Fire from the Sky by Moa Backe Åstot.  She grew up in Stockholm, Sweden and lives in Duluth, Minnesota. 

NM: Congratulations on Fire from the Sky being chosen as a Printz Honor Book—only the second time a translation has received Printz honors! You’re an unusual and impressive triple threat: you write in both English and Swedish and you translate from Swedish into English! Please tell us about your path to becoming both a writer and translator.

EA: I knew from a very young age that I wanted to be a writer, or rather, that I was one, that this was my way of processing life around me. I began writing as soon as I could hold a pen.  I have always loved translating as well. As a teenager, I used to translate American songs into Swedish, just for kicks. And when I moved to the United States in my mid-twenties, people would often ask me to translate things for them—old letters, farm journals from their Swedish ancestors, etc. From then on, translation jobs have seemed to find me, and the work fits me like a glove. To this day, I don’t solicit translation work, it just comes to me. Like other translators, I love this work–and I do love writing too!

NM: You grew up in Stockholm and now live in the equally cold climate of Duluth. I read that you, “came to the United States as an exchange student your senior year in high school, and met your future husband three days before going home to Sweden.” That sounds like it must have been quite exciting! Can you tell us a little more of your “backstory”?

EA: I came to the United States as an exchange student in high school, and then again in college. I got married and moved to a very small and very lovely town in northern Wisconsin named Spooner, where my children grew up and I wrote and translated. Now I live in Duluth, a new life for me in many ways, but I still write and translate. And when I can, I get out on the lake walk or walk in the woods, or, in the winter, ski or go Nordic skating.

NM: How did Fire from the Sky find you?

EA: An editor from Rabén & Sjögren–Moa Backe Åstot’s publisher, and a publisher I have worked with for many years–sent me Fire from the Sky and asked me to translate a few chapters for a book fair. The sample was also sent to Arthur Levine at Levine Querido. They knew I had translated the sample and liked it and asked if I would do the rest. And as I was already head over heels in love with the book, I said, “Yes!”

NM: For those who haven’t read Fire from the Sky, it’s the coming-of-age story of a teenage reindeer herder as well as a multi-dimensional tale that deals with Sami culture, acceptance of sexual orientation in the indigenous Sami culture, and suppression of an indigenous culture by the local dominant one (in this case, Sami by Swedish). Can you shed more light on the themes in the book? Did you have any contact with Sami culture when you were growing up in Stockholm. If not, did you learn about it through this translation?

EA: I am glad you are emphasizing these themes that, for a book that looks like a love story in a wonderful setting, give it great depth. My parents grew up in the area in Sweden where the book is set, north of the Arctic Circle so I am very familiar with the setting for the book. I came in contact with the Sami culture when visiting, though only in a superficial way. I learned much from working with this book (but also other books written by people from the Sami community, for example, Stolen by Ann-Helen Laestadeus, translated by the amazing Swedish-to-English translator Rachel Willson-Broyles). The way the author treats these difficult subjects in the book–such as a dominant culture’s oppression of a minority culture–invites no pity. She shows us a culture that is about so much more than oppression and homophobia and that has its own strengths to persevere.

NM: What challenges did you encounter in translating this book and how did you handle or resolve them? Did you have any contact with the author when you were working on the translation?

EA: I did have contact with the author while working on this book. It is rare that an author is involved, but I was having difficulties with some of the language, the names of various clothing articles for example. As the different pieces of clothing are decidedly Sami, there are no English words for them, so the Sami words have been left as is. But I still needed to understand exactly how the clothing went on, in order to describe things correctly. Another challenge was everything having to do with reindeer husbandry. Again, the author was very helpful. I am still not sure I got everything right. I never am.

NM: The book is about a fascinating, less-known culture—reindeer herders—and the text is dotted with Sami words, which are sometimes defined in context and sometimes not; for the latter, the reader has to glean the meaning implicitly from the context. How did you and your editor arrive at this choice? How did you decide which words to gloss to leave the reader to infer? Was there any discussion about including a pronunciation guide?

EA: The decision was not mine, though I have to say I am in agreement with the author. When writing the book in Swedish, the author had already decided what phrases she wanted to have in Sami and they were not translated, or footnoted, in Swedish either. And I don’t remember seeing any discussion about this in Swedish media when the book came out. I do believe that Swedish readers might have higher tolerance for foreign languages sprinkled in with what they read. The Sami language that the author speaks, Lule Sami (there are more than ten different Sami languages) is a Uralic language, not Germanic, as Swedish and English, so it was no easier for the Swedish readers to understand than the English speakers who read my translation. I do think the Sami language in the book, gives the book a special “flavor” or shine.

NM: I saw that you’re translating The Lost Ones (slated for release in early 2025), the third volume in one of my favorite recent upper MG/YA series, The Moonwind Mysteries. For those who aren’t familiar, the first volume was shortlisted for the 2024 GLLI YA Translated Book Prize. Without any spoilers, can you tell us about The Lost Ones?

EA: I am so glad you asked about this. This series is fun and well written. A 12-year-old, very clever orphan, named Mika Moonwind, and her police officer friend Valdemar Hoff, solve some pretty horrendous crimes together in the city of Stockholm in the years around 1880. The city is so well described that you feel you are right there, and the characters come alive in a way that is not always true for middle-grade fiction. You can’t help falling in love with Mika Moonwind.

NM: You’ve both written and translated mysteries for young readers. Is that random or do you have a special affinity for mysteries? What makes the genre fun? Are there challenges unique to the genre?

EA: I don’t have a special affinity for mysteries, but they seem to have found me lately. I have written many other books as well, but not managed to get them published. My Swedish skateboard mystery was written for “reluctant readers,” my son, a skateboarder, and his friends. So I wanted things to happen all the time. It worked.

NM: What are you currently working on? Any dream projects or books you’d like to translate next?

EA: I have always dreamed of being able to do a new translation of the Moomin books and anything by Astrid Lindgren. But other people have beat me to it. I don’t think that will ever happen. I am working on a very exciting project for a Canadian publisher that I can’t talk about just yet, and I am currently spending a month in a small writing apartment in central Stockholm on a stipend through the Swedish Writers Union, writing another middle-grade novel in Swedish.

NM: Thank you so much for joining us, Eva Apelqvist!

EA: Thank you so much, Nanette, for doing this interview and asking great questions.

Award-winning opera singer Nanette McGuinness is the translator of over 100 books and graphic novels for children and adults from French, Italian, German and Spanish into English, including the much-loved Geronimo Stilton Graphic Novels, as well as Tiki: A Very Ruff Year (nominated for the 2023 Eisner and Harvey Awards) and Alice on the Run: One Child’s Journey Through the Rwandan Civil War (2023 GLLI YA Translated Book Prize Honor Book, 2023 Mosaic Prize winner, 2023 Excellence in Graphic Literature Finalist and 2023 Harvey Award nominee). Accolades have also gone to her translations of Magical History Tour: Vikings and of Magical History Tour: Gandhi (both 2023 Excellence in Graphic Literature Finalists), Luisa: Now and Then (2019 Stonewall Honor Book; 2020 GLLI YA Translated Honor Book; YALSA’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens in 2019) and California Dreamin’: Cass Elliot Before the Mamas & the Papas (2018 Harvey Award; YALSA’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens in 2018).