We are proud to announce that Hanna Johansson’s Body Double and Åsa Avdic’s The Witch of Sea and Sorrow have been nominated for the Prisma Literary Award 2025. Body Double is recognized in the category Novel of the Year, while The Witch of Sea and Sorrow is nominated for Children’s and Young Adult Book of the Year.
Based in Malmö, Sweden, the Prisma Award celebrates contemporary queer literature. Its mission is to highlight LGBTQIA+ stories, relationships, and experiences while fostering cultural exchange between Nordic queer voices and the wider literary world.
Here is what the jury wrote about the nominated works:
The Witch of Sea and Sorrow creates an unusually intense tension in queer youth literature with its dark and nerve-wracking tone. Åsa Avdic depicts how hatred and prejudice can shape young queer lives, but also how support and closeness emerge in the families we choose for ourselves. A novel in which love, community, and the right to be oneself become the strongest counterforce.
A brown lipstick, two beige coats that get mixed up, a ghostwriter, and a timeless department store. Body Double is a clever, well-written thriller. It’s a story that moves around the city like a borderland, where a suggestive web gets woven tighter and tighter around the relationship between Naomi and Laura. A skillfully written novel that touches on themes such as time, desire, and transgression.
The winners of the Prisma Literary Award will be announced on November 8, 2025
