Niviaq Korneliussen

Niviaq Korneliussen
Niviaq Korneliussen (2016)
Born	(1990-01-27) 27 January 1990 Nanortalik, Greenland
Occupation	Novelist
Language	Greenlandic, Danish
Years active	2013 – Present
Notable works	Homo Sapienne (2014) Naasuliardarpi (2020)
Notable awards	Nordic Council Literature Prize (2021)

Niviaq Korneliussen (born 27 January 1990) is a Greenlandic writer, who writes in Greenlandic and Danish. Her 2014 debut novel, Homo Sapienne, was written in Greenlandic, as well as in a Danish translation by the author, with both published by Milik in 2014. Naasuliardarpi (2020) was her follow-up a few years later, and earned her the prestigious Nordic Council Literature Prize.

Biography

Korneliussen was born in Nanortalik, Greenland. She studied social sciences at the University of Greenland and then psychology at the University of Aarhus, but ended up dropping out of both programs as her writing career launched.

In 2012 she took part in the Allatta! writing project, which encourages young Greenlanders to write literature that reflects their lives. Korneliussen's short story "San Francisco" was one of the 10 Allatta! works published in Greenlandic and Danish in the project's 2013 anthology.

Her 2014 debut novel Homo Sapienne focuses on the lives of five young adults in Nuuk. It was noted for both its use of modern storytelling techniques and for its portrayal of LGBTQ+ people in Greenlandic society. As a lesbian, Korneliussen said it was important for her to write about gay life in Greenland because she had never encountered anything about homosexuality in Greenlandic literature.

Homo Sapienne was nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize and the Politiken Literature Award in 2015 and has subsequently been published in English, French, German, Swedish, Norwegian and Romanian.

In 2020, she published Naasuliardarpi in Greenlandic and a Danish translation, Blomsterdalen, (Flower Valley), which won the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2021. In 2022, Greenlandic Culture Minister Peter P. Olsen presented Korneliussen a cultural award for her writing.

Works

• "San Francisco"
  • published in Inuusuttut — nunatsinni nunarsiarmilu (2013). ISBN 978-87-92790-18-7
  • published in Ung i Grønland — ung i verden (2015). ISBN 978-87-92790-43-9
• HOMO sapienne (2014). ISBN 978-87-92790-44-6
  • translated into Danish by the author as HOMO sapienne (2014). ISBN 978-87-92790-65-1
  • translated into German by Giannina Spinty-Mossin and Katja Langmaier as Nuuk #ohne Filter (2016) ISBN 978-3-902902-47-4
  • translated into English (Great Britain) by Anna Halager as Crimson (2018). ISBN 978-0-349-01056-4
  • translated into French by Inès Jorgensen as Homo sapienne (2018). ISBN 978-2-924519-58-5
  • translated into Icelandic by Heiðrún Ólafsdóttir as HOMO sapína (2018). ISBN 978-9935-465-92-4
  • translated into Swedish by Jonas Rasmussen as Homo Sapienne (2018). ISBN 978-91-7343-752-3
  • translated into English (USA) by Anna Halager as Last night in Nuuk (2019). ISBN 978-0-8021-4674-8
  • translated into Norwegian by Kim Leine as HOMO sapienne (2019). ISBN 978-82-02-57245-7
  • translated into Romanian by Simina Răchițeanu as HOMO sapienne (2020). ISBN 978-973-47-3296-8
  • translated into Polish by Agata Lubowicka as HOMO sapienne (2021). ISBN 978-83-953485-6-3
• Naasuliardarpi (2020). ISBN 978-87-93941-15-1
  • translated into Danish by the author as Blomsterdalen (2020). ISBN 978-87-02-27838-5
  • translated into Faroese by Vagnur Streymoy as Blómudalurin (2022). ISBN 978-99972-1-462-1
  • translated into Polish by Agata Lubowicka as Dolina Kwiatów (2022). ISBN 978-83-8191-546-5
  • translated into Italian by Francesca Turri as La valle dei fiori (2023). ISBN 978-88-7091-670-6
  • translated into German by Franziska Hüther as Das Tal der Blumen (2023). ISBN 978-3-442-76239-2
  • translated into French by Inès Jorgensen as La vallée des fleurs (2023). ISBN 978-2-264-08113-1