Ida Therén is a Swedish novelist whose work moves between history, art, and the inner lives of women. Her writing explores the porous boundary between documented reality and imaginative reconstruction, often returning to artists, mystics, and other figures who have lived at the margins of accepted narratives.

Her novel The Invisible Temple (2025) reimagines the life and world of the painter Hilma af Klint, tracing the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual landscapes in which her art took shape. The book was awarded Novel of the Year by the Prisma Nordic Literary Award.

Therén’s fiction is rooted in archival research and historical sources, yet her prose is shaped by a modernist sensibility and a strong interest in atmosphere, rhythm, and interior experience. She writes about women’s creative work, desire, solitude, and the ways in which artistic and spiritual searching can exist in tension with social expectations.

Alongside her novels, she has worked for many years as a cultural journalist, writing essays and criticism on literature, art, and contemporary culture. Her work often returns to questions of how history is written, whose voices are preserved, and how literature can give form to lives that were never fully recorded.

She has lived and worked in several European countries and the United States. After a dozen years abroad she is now based in Stockholm.

Her debut novel, To Embrace a Waterfall, about June Mansfield will be out in Greek and Czech summer of 2026.

Fiction:

“Det osynliga templet - en vision om Hilma af Klint” (the Invisible Temple – a Vision of Hilma af Klint) came out in Swedish spring ´25. In November, it was awarded as “Novel of the Year” by Prisma Nordic Literary Award. The jury’s motivation:

The person behind the artist Hilma af Klint is brought to life anew in this idiosyncratic, experimental portrayal. This year’s novel is a well-written, spiritual tribute to themes that people throughout the ages have explored through non-normative lives: polyamory, queer desire, creation, and ideas of what a world might contain beyond the earthly.

Ida Therén’s depiction of af Klint and the people she loved, and who loved her, makes queerness visible within a specific historical moment. By weaving together extensive research with a creative staging, Therén sheds new light on the artist, her life and relationships, as well as on the conditions faced by those who choose to give everything for art and for other women.

Her debut novel “Att omfamna ett vattenfall” (To Embrace a Waterfall) was released in October 2020 in Sweden, to critical acclaim. See some of the reviews in Swedish press here (link).

For questions about foreign rights, please contact Marion Duvert at Clegg Agency.

other work:

In addition to her fiction, Therén has worked as a freelance cultural journalist since 2010, contributing essays, criticism, and interviews to major Swedish newspapers and literary journals. Her nonfiction writing addresses literature, contemporary culture, feminism, children’s rights, and spirituality.

She has also co-published the bilingual literary magazine CONST Literary Preview and has appeared regularly in Swedish television and radio as a cultural commentator.

Therén studied history and began her career working internationally in the cultural and creative industries before focusing full-time on writing.

About “The invisible temple - a vision of hilma af klint”:

Det osynliga templet is a re-imagning of a few days in the life of Hilma af Klint, the Swedish painter, unknown during her lifetime but today considered one of the most important artists of the 20th century.

The novel has been widely praised in the Swedish press for its psychological depth and historical sensitivity. Sydsvenskan described it as “a profound exploration of the need to live with uncertainty,” while Jönköpings-Posten wrote that “Hilma af Klint rises from the pages as a living literary character.” Dagens Nyheter emphasized the novel’s nuanced portrayal of isolation and inner struggle and Finnish Hufvudstadsbladet highlighted the holistic use of research, in creating the living novel. Critics have also highlighted its feminist undercurrent and its depiction of the early 20th-century art world, noting how it sheds light on the marginalization of women artists (Bernur, Ponton).

About To “Embrace a Waterfall”:

Europe, 2010. A 25 year old woman tries to find her own way of living by love, friendship, art and sex as she moves through different European cities, during a few sweltering summer months.

New York, 1920. The dancehall girl June Mansfield Miller – a Jewish emigrant from Romania – lives a life outside of the mainstream. She marries wannabe author Henry Miller and they live a chaotic life in Brooklyn, part of the time with June’s live in girlfriend Jean. When they go to the bohemian Paris of the late 1920’s they get drawn into a toxic love triangle with Anaïs Nin - depicted in Nin’s celebrated book "Henry & June". But only one woman walks out unharmed of the situation.

In “To Embrace a Waterfall” (a title inspired by a poem by the queer Swedish poet Paul Andersson) we meet the two women, and their respective challenges, in an exploration of the genius/muse dynamic. Despite living almost 100 years apart, both women are met with intersecting limitations to their freedom, as they try to find a life that feels true to them, and not what society expects from them.

In a sense, it is about living life as if it was art, an exploration, a performance. Or a novel.

The book will be published in Czech and Greek during 2026-2027.

Att omfamna ett vattenfall is published by Natur o Kultur in Sweden.

Excerpts from the book has previously appeared in print in:

• Granta

• Nexus: the International Henry Miller Journal

• 10-tal (Sweden’s largest literary journal).
  

Selected critical reception:

“A profound exploration of the need to live with uncertainty.” — Sydsvenskan, on Det osynliga templet (2025)

“Hilma af Klint rises from the pages as a living literary character.” — Jönköpings-Posten, on Det osynliga templet

“Therén breathes life into the many dimensions of Hilma af Klint… navigating the dialogues between Hilma and the dead with great care and wisdom.” — Bernur, on Det osynliga templet

“Glittering novel about fallen women… The approach recalls Sara Stridsberg.” — Dagens Nyheter, on Att omfamna ett vattenfall (2020)

“Beautiful prose and refined dialogue.” — Svenska Dagbladet on Att omfamna ett vattenfall (2020)

Other work:

A book with collected articles 2007-2017 came out in 2017, published by Mondial. It’s called "Frihet, jämlikhet & systerskap" (Freedom, Equality & Sisterhood). 

Also published are numerous prefaces, essays, forewords and anthology pieces in various publications.

Chapter in an upcoming anthology about Anaïs Nin (Cambridge University Press, 2026).

Sample from CONST Literary Preview: “Somebody’s Mom”, about my own experience of entering motherhood (2013).