The Red Handler

Johan Harstad is a Norwegian author, graphic designer, playwright, drummer, and international sensation. He is the winner of the 2008 Brage Award (Brageprisen), previously won by Per Petterson, and his books have been published in over eleven countries. In 2009, he was named the first ever in-house playwright at the National Theatre in Oslo. His first novel Buzz Aldrin, What Happened To You In All The Confusion, originally published in Norway by Gyldendal in 2005, was made into a TV series in 2009 starring The Wire’s Chad Coleman. Harstad lives in Oslo.

David Smith grew up outside of Atlanta and studied English and philosophy at the University of Georgia. He then earned a Master’s Degree in the Humanities from the University of Chicago. After Chicago, a lifelong interest in his family’s Nordic heritage brought him to Norway. He took language classes at the University of Oslo, before settling in Bergen and starting to work as a commercial translator. In 2014, he earned a National Translator Accreditation from the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research. He is a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison