Author Wera von Essen is awarded the Berns Prize 2022 for having written a unique literary style that presents a flipped Stockholm. With von Essen, we encounter a run-down Östermalm, but also a peripheral city with highway hotels and hard-to-reach suburbs. In this disparate metropolis, a cosmopolitan window is opened by letting air in from other international horizons, especially Brazil. Through this, von Essen’s independent and budding authorship has brought a Catholic outlook to life in a Stockholm reality.

“I feel honored,” says Wera von Essen. “Stockholm has meant a lot to my writing, like an alchemy, to make the place that hurts you bloom. To insist on the heart’s place in the harshness. And to share space and conditions with other people, historically and as a time document.”

The Berns Prize, or the Berns Scholarship, is an annual prize awarded since 1966 by the Swedish PEN to an author, journalist, or photographer who has “made a valuable contribution to the portrayal of Stockholm’s culture and nature, its institutions and its development, or Stockholm life in other forms.” The prize was established in 1963 by the poet Johannes Edfelt and his brother Arne Edfelt, who then ran Berns, on the occasion of Berns Salonger’s 100th anniversary. The winner is selected by the Swedish PEN’s board and awarded in collaboration with Berns.

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