Background

Loveid was born on August 21, 1951, in Mysen in eastern Norway, but grew up in Bergen, where she lived until 1996 when she moved to Oslo. Since her parents both made their living at sea, she lived most of her childhood with her maternal grandparents. She is the daughter of Erik Loveid and Ingrid Meyer.

Education

As a child and young adult, Loveid entertained herself by painting and writing. Part of her formal education was at the Bergen Academy of Art and Design, where she studied graphic design, drama, and theater history. Her early interest in visual art can be detected in all her texts.

Career

In contemporary Norwegian literature, Loveid is nearly always spoken of as a genre transgressor: there is poetry in her plays, theatre in her poetry, and she writes a prose which is a synthesis of various genres. In her later publications, she has increasingly investigated cultural-historical and societal themes in a more essayistic style. Despite her outsider status in terms of genre, she has been and still is one of Norway’s most visible and celebrated authors. She has been notable, however, for being exceptional, rather than as a representative for any literary trend, tendency or grouping.

Cecilie's first written work was a story published in an anthology in 1968, when she was just eighteen years old. Then, three years later, at the age of twenty-one, she made her literary debut with the novel ''Most.'' The theme of her first novel was a woman’s struggle for self-realization, a theme that Loveid has continued to weave throughout many of her novels and plays. But, though a common motif in contemporary literature, her way of handling it is seen by some critics as out of the ordinary.

Cecilie worked as an author and dramatist at the Norwegian Writers' Center in 1974. She taught at the Skrivekunstakademiet, Bergen, as well as at other universities such as Universities of Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim and Tromsp, Telemark Distriksthpgskole and abroad. She was also a poet at the Bergen Festival in 1991 and a member of the editorial staff of Profil magazine in 1969.

Cecilie Loveid is a contributor to works, including Vi vil det skat vare evig, 1984; Dusj (opera composed by Synne Skougen), 1982; Badehuset (play), 1989; Onsdag 13, 1990; and Da-ba-da, (ballet), 1990. She is also a contributor to Titanic, a collective production with Lisbeth Hilde and Lars Steinar Sorbo.

She has been an author at Colon publishing house since April 26, 1999.

Achievements

• Cecilie Loveid is considered to be one of the most important and original writers of modern Norwegian literature and theatre and is a central figure in the renewal of Nordic modernism. Since her career began, she has become the most translated and the most international contemporary Norwegian writer; her plays continue to be translated and produced all over the world.

Works

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• book

  • Sug

    (Loveid's real breakthrough as an author came with her nov...)

    1979
  • Seaswell 1986
  • Lille Pille og lille Fille 1990
  • Rhindøtrene 1996
  • Fanget villrose 1977

Views

As an experimental language artist, Cecilie Loveid operates freely amid all kinds of art and uses elements from the knowledge she has of painting, photography, music, dance, theatre, film and folklore, and its study. Few texts are so interwoven with associative connections and, at the same time, so loaded with wholly concrete quotations, whether with roots in other literature or in visual art, film or theatre; indeed, one might say that she is involved in the business of quotation across the various art forms.

Cecilie Loveid has said that she regards the writing of a text “as making an object,” and that she is, first and foremost, trying to get this object to seem well-made. It is most likely this way of thinking that results in texts that seem strict, limited and almost ‘moulded’ while being, at the same time, open, playful and flirtatious.

Despite an experimental focus on what it is to write poetry, Løveid retains a focus on classic themes such as life, death and love. In addition, her interest in classic literature and philosophy, from Euripides to Botho Strauss and from Plato to Wittgenstein, is clear throughout. As such, Cecilie Loveid is both a bearer of tradition and a force for renewal within Norwegian literature.

Membership

• Norwegian Authors' Union , Oslo

Interests

• hiking, swimming, collecting old wooden toys

Connections

Cecilie married Bjorn H. Ianke in 1978. They have three children: one son and two daughters.

husband:

Bjorn H. Ianke

Sister:

Birthe Marie Løveid

Sister:

Kari Løveid

Brother:

Markus C. Løveid

Daughter:

Ellisiv Løveid Ianke

niece:

Hilde Løveid Varvin

niece:

Torunn Løveid

Cousin:

Bjørn Steinar Meyer

Bjørn Steinar Meyer works at Smaalenenes Avis.

References

• The Bloomsbury Guide to Women's Literature Provides biographies, novel synopses, poems, plays, and essays by or about women, and discusses feminist literature.
  1992
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