Tone Myklebust
Tone Myklebust (b. 1970) lives in Egersund, the neighboring town of Sokndal. She has a background in education and management, but has worked more or less full-time with writing since her writing studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Tromsø. Myklebust has published three books to date: the fairytale book Gutten med Trollpikken (2017, Dreyer Bok), the short story collection Det stoppar ikkje her (2020, Cappelen Damm) and the short story collection Rutine ved varsling (2023, Cappelen Damm).
Myklebust is particularly concerned with the fragility of human life and with the fact that literature - and art in general - should be a place that can accommodate and make visible what one otherwise tries to hide.
During her residency in March 2025, Tone has been working on an ongoing project, a novel with the working title «Den kvite dagen» ("The White Day").
"I have sat and written in the office at Sandbekk, but also in the house where we stayed overnight. Different places, different energies. A place of writing seeps into the text. The air, the smells, the sounds, the open, the locked, the abandoned, the living, the bent tree trunk, the broken plate, the twig forcing its way up through rusty metal, a paint-worn target, a bullet hole in a window. And just as important as the writing: Meeting and talking to new people, including about the concept of will."
Here is a small text Tone wrote during her stay:
THE STONE, THE ANIMAL AND I
"What if everything just collapses. Pebble after pebble breaks loose and rolls down. Tearing away everything in its path: Trees, cars, houses, people. A compelling movement that cannot be stopped. Forward. Downward. Once the collapse is underway, there is no turning back. Does stone have will, does animal have will, do I have will — or are we the same, the stone, the animal and I. Is what we call will and choice in humans also just instinct. A force of nature dressed in finery?"
Photo © Markus Schröder / Tone Myklebust