Ellen Mattson was born in 1962 on Sweden's west coast, and is the daughter of children's author Ollo Mattson. Regarded as one of Sweden's most important young writers and critics, she has published five works of fiction. Her novel, Snow, was published by Cape in 2005, the first of Mattson's works to be published in Britain. The translation by Sarah Death won the Society of Authors Bernard Shaw Prize for Swedish translation.
