Rúnar Vignisson is an Icelandic author and translator who won The Icelandic Translation Award for J. M. Coetzee’s Boyhood. He has translated books by many acclaimed authors, such as Philip Roth, Amy Tan, William Faulkner, Ian McEwan and Elizabeth Jolley. He is author of seven books of fiction and was shortlisted for the Icelandic Literature Award. His latest short story collection won the DV Cultural Prize for Literature and his stories have been translated into Spanish, German, Polish, Chinese and English. He co-edits a five-volume series of short stories from around the world and currently directs the Creative Writing Program at the University of Iceland.
Rúnar was a visiting author at the Authors at Large Icelandic retreat and gave a talk on modern and contemporary Icelandic literature. He and his wife Gudrun Gudmunsdottir assisted us in making arrangements for that retreat.