Hákon Gunnarsson

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My name is Hákon Gunnarsson, and I was born in the year 1970 in Iceland. Apart from the occasional trip across the ocean I have pretty much stayed in Iceland ever since, physically that is. Reading can take you anywhere, and everywhere. That is something I found out at an early age, and have been an incurable bookaholic for most of my life. It is through the pages of books that I have done most of my traveling.

I knew this was something I was interested in, so I went to University to study comparative literature, and finished an MA in that. Oddly enough, while there I wrote in equal parts about literature, and cinema. My first published piece was actually neither fiction, nor about literature, but about movies. It was an article about cinema that was in a book published in 1999, and is in Icelandic.

Some more articles and translations followed, about movies, and literature, but as I continued to write, I started to get the urge to write fiction for myself. It is a bit different to write nonfiction, and fiction, so it wasn't until 2013 that I published my first short story in Icelandic. It was called "Biðin - svipmynd" which in English means "The waiting - a snapshot" and it is a snapshot of a man who has got himself into trouble. Since then a few more have been published in Icelandic.

My first story to appear in English was "The Ballad of the Fire Spewing Dragon" which is a comic fantasy about a dragon. It was in the anthology Ellipsis... : An Anthology of Humorous Short Stories which was published to help raise money for Doctors without Borders, an organization that I think really does an admirable work. For those that are interested, this book can be found on Amazon.

Since that story appeared, two of my stories have been published by PICNSTORY, a Webzine that I like very much. I used to photograph a lot, mostly landscape because that was static enough for me. Even though I don't do much photography anymore, I like working with photos, and this challenge to write stories from images is something that I find a lot of fun.

That is the very short story of my writing career so far. There is more, or at least I hope there will be. I know that some stories have been accepted for publication in the next two years, so I might say that it is going to be an ongoing story, but let's not go into that. For those that might like to find more about my writing, you can sometimes find me on Goodreads