Artists in residence at Villa Martinson (Jonseredsstiftelsen, University of Gothenburg)

Ida Mirow is a poet, writer and director working across literature, theatre and film. Her debut, the poetry collection Den mjukaste vännen, was published by It-lit in 2022. In 2018, she founded Pralin Magasin, a literary magazine which she continues to run. She has taught and supervised creative writing and has also worked as a dramaturg.

In autumn 2026, she will present Döden är inget utan dig, a production for which she is both playwright and director, at Teater Brunnsgatan Fyra.

During her residency, she will work on her novel Om uppfostran, which explores the experience of trying to have a child on one’s own.

Fiona Sampson will work on her next poetry collection, Watertango (for Wesleyan University Press) and How to Be Me, a literary biography of Rousseau (for Princeton University Press). Translated into 38 languages, she’s published 31 books. Among prizes in Sweden, US, Bosnia, India, France, Albania, North Macedonia, Come Down (2021) won European Lyric Atlas, Naim Frasheri, and Wales Poetry Book of the Year. Professor Emerita Roehampton University and Senior Research Fellow Oxford University, she’s been elected an MBE, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Wordsworth Trust, and awarded the Society of Authors Cholmondeley and University of Oxford Newdigate prizes, AHRC and Arts Council fellowships. Critic, broadcaster, translator, editor (Poetry Review 2005-12), she’s Trustee, Royal Literary Fund. Two-Way Mirror (2021) was a New York Times Bestseller.

Simona HAMER (1984) is an award-winning freelance playwright, writer and dramaturg based in Ljubljana (Slovenia). 

For her playwriting work, she has been awarded with National award for best play (Postcards or Fear is hollow on the inside and empty from the outside) and several nominations for best plays and short stories. Her work was staged in all the major Slovenian theatres and presented in Germany, Austria, USA, Serbia, Croatia and Italy.  Her first novel Roommates was published with great success in September 2025 by a prominent Slovenian publishing house Cankarjeva založba. 

In her artistic work, Hamer is especially interested in (a feminist perspective on) marginalized themes, social taboos, problems of nationalism and discrimination, patriarchy, and exploitation of people and nature. During her residency in Villa Martinson she will be developing a new play about No! about a group of women in a self-defence course.

Linda Spåman is a Swedish writer and artist. She made her debut in 2011 with the life-affirming graphic novel Misslyckat självmord i Mölndals bro (Failed Suicide at Mölndal Bridge), published by Albert Bonniers Förlag. Since then, she has published eight graphic novels, including Från bArn till dÖd, Äkta Spåman and Brf Ensamheten, the latter of which will be adapted for the stage at Hagateatern in Gothenburg in spring 2027.

Her latest book, Ett år av Apokalyptiskt tänkande (A Year of Apocalyptic Thinking), was published by Galago in spring 2025 and was nominated for the August Prize in autumn 2026.

During her residency at Villa Martinson, she will work on her graphic novel project Gå ned i vikt på 30000 år! (Lose Weight in 30,000 Years!). As the title suggests, the book explores the timeless subject of weight, among other things…