Gunnar Wærness

Gunnar Wærness is a Norwegian poet, musician, and illustrator born in 1971 in Heimdal, Norway. His poetry collections include Friends with Everyone, translated by Gabriel Gudding (Action Books, 2024); Ta på Jesus=Touch Jesus: poetry & documentary, also translated by Gabriel Gudding (Oktober Forlag, 2021); and Å skrive er å be om for mye: Dikt og masker 1988–2020 [To Write Is to Ask for Too Much: Poems and Masks, 1988–2020] (Oktober Forlag, 2020). 

Wærness’s  debut collection, Kongesplint (Oktober Forlag, 1999), was awarded the Tarjei Vesaas First Book Prize. He also won the Dobloug Prize, a literature award for Swedish and Norwegian fiction, in 2023. Wærness  translates from Bulgarian, English, and Russian. He has translated the work of American poets CAConrad, Terrance Hayes, and Sharon Olds into Norwegian.