Jóna Valborg Árnadóttir

Jóna Valborg was born in 1973 in Reykjavik. She matriculated from the Commercial College of Iceland and holds a B.A. in Icelandic, an M.Paed. in Icelandic and Education and an MS in Human Resource Management from the University of Iceland and a diploma in Project Management. In her teens, she acted with various amateur theatre groups and spent half a year as an Erasmus exchange student in the dramaturgy department at the University of Aarhus.

Jóna Valborg has worked in human resources, marketing and public relations, as a project and events manager and as an editor. For a while, she taught Icelandic and drama in high school. From 2004 to 2006 she sat on the editorial board of the magazine Children and Culture.

Jóna has been writing for as long as she can remember. It was in 2013 that her first book, Brosbókin, was published. It received the Spring Wind Award from IBBY and a nomination for the Icelandic Literature Prize. Jóna writes her books in collaboration with graphic designer and illustrator Elsa Nielsen.

In the spring of 2019, Jóna Valborg stayed for three weeks in a writer’s workshop in Åmål, Sweden. She is a member of SÍUNG (Forever Young) and the Icelandic Writers' Association and has participated in the literary project Poets in elementary schools.

Jóna Valborg lives in Álftanes with her husband and three children.