She was given the assignment a year ago but only starts now, on June 1st.
"I've been very happy with my writing life, so this is really something to take on again, but I feel like it. These are questions that I'm passionate about."
Her predecessor, Mats Malm, took office after a crisis that threatened the Academy's foundations. Ingrid Carlberg will lead an institution that now not only has peace of mind but also job satisfaction and a good team spirit, she emphasizes.
"Mats Malm has made sure that whoever takes over from him as permanent secretary will have an easier assignment than he did."
She also avoids being noticed as the first woman in the post. When she was elected in 2020, it was as the 16th female member in history. This fall, her book "The Academy's Invisible Member," about Anna Maria Lenngren - who could have been the first in the late 18th century - will be published.
Enthusiast
Ingrid Carlberg is an enthusiastic person. When she was commissioned to write "the year's memorial drawing" for Lenngren, it led to a book.
"I was so incredibly fascinated by her life story."
Now she will devote all her time to protecting the Swedish language and literature. In a crisis of reading and language and when the infrastructure of literature is in turmoil, she sees the Academy's efforts as more urgent than ever.
"We cannot sit on our chairs and polish our halo. If we are to fulfill the mission that Gustav III once gave us, we must defend literature and reading."
The declining Swedish cultural funding is visible in the increasing number of applications to the Academy, which now distributes 20 million kronor annually, almost doubling in just a few years, she says proudly, but she does not want to comment on the government's attempts to attract more private money.
Undertones
Carlberg will also delve into AI's consequences for literature and the Swedish language.
"AI cannot read the undertones of a text or understand something as basic as literary design. Machines can never replace human creativity."
But she does not want to take a position on the Swedish Writers' Association's agreement that authors' works, "for compensation", according to the association, should be allowed to be used to train a Swedish AI language model.
"Personally, I don't think the big question surrounding AI is how we should help AI, but whether it is a threat to the conditions of writers and translators."
"That I would let AI create a literary work in my name is completely unthinkable."
Born: 1961.
Future plans: "To become a good grandmother. The biggest thing that will happen to me in the next few weeks is not that I will become permanent secretary of the Academy, but that I will become a grandmother."
Currently reading: "A boring part of the assignment is that I can't tell you about what I'm reading."
Background: Journalist at Dagens Nyheter, visiting professor of journalism at the University of Gothenburg. Debuted as a children's and young adult author in 2002, with the books about Rosalie.
The non-fiction books "The Pill" (2008), "There's a Room Here Waiting for You... The Story of Raoul Wallenberg" (2012), "Nobel. The enigmatic Alfred, his world and his prize" (2019), "The Marionettes. A story about the world as political theater" (2023).
Some parts of the Swedish Academy's work that Ingrid Carlberg highlights:
1. Awards: 161 prizes, scholarships and grants, totaling 20.2 million kronor, a sum that has almost doubled in the last five years. The Academy has recently established a new debut prize and three new non-fiction prizes, including an essay prize.
2. Supports work to promote reading. It has, among other things, produced and distributed poetry books for children and educational language materials for newcomers. It is the principal of the project "Reading literacy for better school results, integration and democracy".
3. Main financier of the Swedish Literature Bank. "This is a gold mine that is online, free for everyone! Thousands of important works from the Swedish cultural heritage. It is a treasure!" says Carlberg.
