Dorthe Nors


Dorthe Nors is a Danish writer. She is the author of Soul, Karate Chop, Mirror, Shoulder, Signal, and Wild Swims.

Background

Nors was born in Herning, Denmark, the youngest of three children. As a child, she enjoyed making up stories that her mother, a teacher and painter, would write down and read back to her. At the age of eleven, she began writing her own stories, poems, and plays.
In 1999, Nors graduated from Aarhus University with a degree in literature and art history.

Career

Before Nors' literary debut in her own name, she worked as a translator of Swedish crime novels, mostly books by author Johan Theorin.
She made her debut in 2002, with the book Soul, published by Samlerens Forlag. Her English-language following began in 2009, when selections from her short story collection Karate Chop were published in English. She became the first Danish writer to have a story published in The New Yorker, when it printed her story "The Heron" in 2013. In 2015, her first short story collection Karate Chop was published in English alongside So Much for That Winter, a joint publication of her novellas Minna Needs Rehearsal Space and Days. Her second collection of short stories Wild Swims was published in English in 2021 by Graywolf Press.
In 2017, she was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize for her novel Mirror, Shoulder, Signal. Her nonfiction book A Line in the World was a finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle award in autobiography.

Personal life

Nors lived in Copenhagen for several years before moving back to Jutland in 2013. She has written about not feeling she fits in to Copenhagen's literary scene.

Nonfiction

Novels

  • Soul, Samlerens Forlag 2001
  • Stormesteren, Samlerens Forlag 2003
  • Ann Lie, 2005
  • Minna mangler et øvelokale, Samlerens Forlag 2013
  • Spejl, skulder, blink, Gyldendal 2015

Short fiction

;Collections
  • Hun kommer, Samlerens Forlag 2007
  • Dage, Samlerens Forlag 2010
  • Kantslag, Samlerens Forlag 2008
  • Kort over Canada, Gyldendal 2018
;Stories
TitleYearFirst publishedReprinted/collectedNotes
The heron2013
The freezer chest2015