Little Dark Room

While studying a seventeenth-century diary, the protagonist of Little Dark Room uncovers information about the first documented professional female artist. This discovery promises to change her academic career, and life in general . . . until she realizes that her "discovery" was nothing more than two pages stuck together. At this point there's no going back though, and she goes to great lengths to hide her mistake—undermining her sanity in the process. A shifty, satirical novel that's funny and colorful, while also raising essential questions about truth, research, and the very nature of belief.

Sigrun Palsdottir completed a PhD in the History of Ideas at the University Oxford in 2001, after which she was a research fellow and lecturer at the University of Iceland. She worked as the editor of Saga, the principal peer-reviewed journal for Icelandic history, from 2008 to 2016. Her previous titles include the historical biography Thora. A Bishop’s Daughter and Uncertain Seas, a story of a young couple and their three children who were killed when sailing from New York to Iceland aboard a ship torpedoed by a German submarine in 1944. Sigrun’s work has been nominated for the Icelandic Literary Prize, Icelandic Women’s Literature Prize, Hagtenkir Non-fiction Prize, and the DV Culture Prize. Uncertain Seas was chosen the best biography in 2013 by booksellers in Iceland.

Lytton Smith is a poet, professor, and translator from the Icelandic. His most recent translations include works by Kristin Omarsdottir, Jon Gnarr, Ofeigur Siguresson, Bragi Olafsson, and Guebergur Bergsson. His most recent poetry collection, The All-Purpose Magical Tent, was published by Nightboat. Having earned his MFA and PhD from Columbia University, he currently teaches at SUNY Geneseo.