Kjersti Annfinnsen

Kjersti Anfinnsen was born in 1975 in the Norwegian city of Bodø. From an early age, she loved composing poems and stories, but since her childhood was spent in the small, secluded commune of Holmestrann, where there was no one who could serve as a mentor and explain the craft of writing, Kjersti chose a different path and, after school, moved to Bergen to study dentistry. After her fourth year, she decided to take a break and set off to travel the world. The strongest impressions on her were made by Sri Lanka, Colombia, and Barcelona. In the spring of 2001, Kjersti received her degree in dentistry and worked in the profession in Tromsø until 2008. It was during this time that she increasingly began to think about her calling. In the end, Kjersti became an editor of the cultural events section at a local newspaper. She later worked as a freelance writer for the newspaper Aftenposten and the travel magazine Vagabond. She studied writing at the Academy of Contemporary Art in Tromsø. At the same time, she continued working as a dentist. This is what determined the professions of Anfinnsen’s characters: in her debut novel, the central figure was a male dentist, and in the second, a female cardiac surgeon. Kjersti currently lives in Oslo and combines medical practice with writing, working on a sequel to Last Caresses.