Jon Fosse

Among Jon Fosse's most well-known plays are The Name, The Child and Someone is Going to Come. The latter was the first play he wrote, but the third to be performed.

He has also written poetry and books for children. Among the playwrights he has translated into Norwegian are Sarah Kane (4:48 Psychosis) and Federico García Lorca (Blood Wedding).

Jon Fosse has received a number of Norwegian and international awards for his writing, including the Norwegian literature award the Brage Prize and the Austrian theatre prize The Nestroy Award.

In 2000 he won Nordic Drama Award for the play A Summer's Day.

In 2003 Jon Fosse won The Honorary Hedda.

The Hedda Jury gave the following reason:

"Last year Honorary Hedda was given out for the very first time - to Wenche Foss. And Honorary Hedda is not to be given out every year. Only when the jury simply can't avoid it. That was how it was last year. That is how it is this year.

The winner of Honorary Hedda is a creating artist, he is a writer, and his writing is diverse - novels, short stories, texts, books for children, essays, poetry and plays. To the joy of everyone who loves theatre, it is mostly as a playwright he has gotten a name. His intense, poetic universe has not just conquered Norway, but all of Europe.

This Honorary Hedda winner of the year is Jon Fosse."

Jon Fosse also was nominated for The Hedda Award 1998 in the open category for his text for Night Sings Its Songs, produced by Rogaland Theatre in 1997.

In 2007 Jon Fosse was awarded The Swedish Academy's Nordic Prize and in 2010 he won the international Ibsen Award for his writing. At the time he had already been given the national Ibsen Award AKA The Ibsen Prize, for The Name in 1996.

The International Ibsen Award jury stated the following, among other things:

"Today the Norwegian author Jon Fosse is one of the leading names in modern drama. Yet he is more than that. He is a universe unto himself, a continent that stretches from the Norwegian Vestlandet where he still lives, to embrace Asia, South America, Eastern Europe and the world as a whole. Since his debut on the National Venue of Theatre scene in Bergen in 1994, his plays have been presented in more than nine hundred productions. His works have been translated to Albanian, Hebrew, Catalonian, Persian, Slovenian, Tibetan and forty other languages. Somebody is going to come, one of his early and most popular plays, will have its first performance in Beijing in October 2010. One of his most recent plays titled I am the wind will play at the same time in London, directed by one of our time’s foremost directors, Patrice Chéreau from France."

The statement can be read in full at the webpage of Ibsen Awards, www.ibsenawards.com: http://www.ibsenawards.com/article.php?cid=2&aid=101&typecat=0

The spring of 2011 the Norwegian government decided to reward Jon Fosse with Grotten, Norway's honorary artist residence, located in Oslo.

SOURCES:

The encyclopaedia Store norske leksikon, snl.no, 02.12.2010, http://www.snl.no/.nbl_biografi/Jon_Fosse/utdypning

Dagbladet, article called Fosse ville ikke flytte inn i Grotten (literally: Fosse didn't want to move into Grotten), May 16 2011:  http://www.dagbladet.no/2011/05/16/kultur/bok/litteratur/jon_fosse/anniken_huitfeldt/16551307/

Sceneweb on The Hedda Award 2003, www.sceneweb.no, 24.10.2012, http://www.sceneweb.no/en/awarding/23886/The_Hedda_Award_2003-2003

Sceneweb on The Hedda Award 1998, www.sceneweb.no, 16.11.2012, http://www.sceneweb.no/en/awarding/23943/The_Hedda_Award_1998-1998

Ibsen Awards, http://www.ibsenawards.com/article.php?cid=2&aid=101&typecat=0

Cand.philol. in 1987, with a minor degree (one year studies) in sociology and philosophy, and a major degree in literature from the University of Bergen.