Tiina Nunnally

Nunnally was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and St. Louis Park, Minnesota.

She was an AFS exchange student to Århus, Denmark in 1969 and 1970. In a 2010 interview with Joanne Matzenbacher, Nunnally said that she learned to speak Danish during this time as an exchange student.{{Cite web |last=by |date=2015-03-31 |title=Steven T. Murray and Tiina Nunnally: On Translating and “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” |url=https://www.southwestwriters.com/steven-t-murray-and-tiina-nunnally-on-translating-and-the-girl-with-the-dragon-tatoo/ |access-date=2025-04-13 |website=SouthWest Writers |language=en-US}}

She received an MA in 1976 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a PhC from the University of Washington in 1979.{{Cite web |title=Tiina Nunnally {{!}} Department of Scandinavian Studies {{!}} University of Washington |url=https://scandinavian.washington.edu/people/tiina-nunnally |access-date=2025-04-13 |website=scandinavian.washington.edu}}

She is an affiliate instructor with the Department of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Washington.

Nunnally is a translator of Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, who sometimes uses the pseudonym Felicity David when edited into UK English. Her translation of Kristin Lavransdatter III: The Cross by Sigrid Undset won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize in 2001, and Peter Høeg's Smilla's Sense of Snow won the American Translators Association's Lewis Galantière Prize.

Her first novel, Maija,{{Cite web |title=Maija {{!}} The Seattle Times |url=https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/19951126/2154482/maija |access-date=2025-04-13 |website=archive.seattletimes.com}} won a Governor's Writers Award from the State of Washington in 1996. Since then two more of her novels have been published.

The Swedish Academy honored Nunnally in 2009 with a special award for her contributions to "the introduction of Swedish culture abroad".{{cite web|url=http://www.svenskaakademien.se/en/node/2449|title=Svenska Akademiens pris för introduktion av svensk kultur utomlands|date=20 December 2009|publisher=Swedish Academy|language=Swedish|accessdate=21 November 2017}}

In 2013, Nunnally was appointed a Knight of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit for her work in translating works from Norwegian to English.{{Cite web |title=Tiina Nunnally {{!}} Penguin Random House |url=https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/128146/tiina-nunnally/ |access-date=2025-04-13 |website=PenguinRandomhouse.com |language=en-US}}

In 2019, Nunnally's translation of the collected Norwegian folktales by Norwegian folklorists Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe was published by the University of Minnesota Press as "The Complete and Original Norwegian Folktales of Asbjørnsen and Moe", and included a foreword by Neil Gaiman. It was the first new English translation of the work in over 150 years, and the first English translation to include all 60 original folktales. In the edition's foreword, author Neil Gaiman wrote of Nunnally's translation, "Each story feels honed, as if it were recently collected from a storyteller who knew how to tell it and who had, in turn, heard it from someone who knew how to tell it." Nunnally's 2019 translation received considerable praise, from sources including the Journal of Folklore Research and the Wall Street Journal.{{Cite web |title=The Complete and Original Norwegian Folktales of Asbjørnsen and Moe |url=https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781452964553/the-complete-and-original-norwegian-folktales-of-asbjornsen-and-moe/ |access-date=2025-04-13 |website=University of Minnesota Press |language=en-US}}{{Cite web |title=Tiina Nunnally, Affiliate Faculty Member Earns Critical Acclaim {{!}} Department of Scandinavian Studies {{!}} University of Washington |url=https://scandinavian.washington.edu/news/2024/04/05/tiina-nunnally-affiliate-faculty-member-earns-critical-acclaim |access-date=2025-04-13 |website=scandinavian.washington.edu}}

After 2002 she lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her husband Steven T. Murray, both full-time freelance literary translators. Murray died in 2018.

• Niels Lyhne by Jens Peter Jacobsen (from Danish) (1990)
• Smilla's Sense of Snow [American title] by Peter Høeg (from Danish) (1993); [UK reprint title: Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow under pseudonym F. David]
• Kristin Lavransdatter I: The Wreath by Sigrid Undset (from Norwegian) (1997)
• Kristin Lavransdatter II: The Wife by Sigrid Undset (from Norwegian) (1999)
• Kristin Lavransdatter III: The Cross by Sigrid Undset (from Norwegian) (2000)
• Don't Look Back by Karin Fossum (from Norwegian) under pseudonym Felicity David (2002)
• He Who Fears the Wolf by Karin Fossum (from Norwegian) under pseudonym Felicity David (2003)
• Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen (from Danish) (2004)
• When the Devil Holds the Candle by Karin Fossum (from Norwegian) under pseudonym Felicity David (2004)
• Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset, Deluxe Classics edition (from Norwegian) (2005)
• Chronicler of the Winds by Henning Mankell (from Swedish) (2006)
• Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren, a new translation, illustrated by Lauren Child (from Swedish) (2007)
• The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen (from Danish) (2019)
• The Complete and Original Norwegian Folktales of Asbjørnsen and Moe (from Norwegian), with a foreword by Neil Gaiman (2019)
• Olav Audunssøn by Sigrid Undset, University of Minnesota Press (from Norwegian) (2020–23)

• Knight, Royal Norwegian Order of Merit (2013)
• Award from the Swedish Academy for “the introduction of Swedish culture abroad” (2009)
• Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for The Royal Physician's Visit by Per Olov Enquist (2003)
• PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize, for Kristin Lavransdatter: The Cross by Sigrid Undset (2001)
• Washington Governor's Writers Award for her novel Maija (1996)
• Lewis Galantière Award from the American Translators Association for Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Høeg (1994)
• American-Scandinavian Foundation Translation Prize for Early Spring by Tove Ditlevsen (1984)

{{Reflist}}

• [https://scandinavian.washington.edu/people/tiina-nunnally Affiliate Faculty] page at the University of Washington
• [https://www.upress.umn.edu/author/tiina-nunnally/ Tiina Nunnally author page] at University of Minnesota Press
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20100821080214/http://www.svenskaakademien.se/web/Svenska_Akademiens_pris_for_introduktion_av_svensk_kultur_utomlands_2009.aspx Nunnally's prize from the Swedish Academy] (in Swedish)
• [https://scandinavian.washington.edu Department of Scandinavian Studies] page at the University of Washington

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Category:1952 births

Category:Living people

Category:Writers from Chicago

Category:American people of Finnish descent

Category:Danish–English translators

Category:Swedish–English translators

Category:Norwegian–English translators

Category:Writers from Milwaukee

Category:People from St. Louis Park, Minnesota

Category:Novelists from Minnesota

Category:American women novelists

Category:20th-century American novelists

Category:21st-century American novelists

Category:20th-century American women writers

Category:21st-century American women writers

Category:20th-century American translators

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Category:Writers from Albuquerque, New Mexico

Category:University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni

Category:Novelists from Illinois

Category:Novelists from Wisconsin