Aaiún Nin is the first recipient of the Grimsrud Scholarship

Created to commemorate what would have been Beate Grimsrud’s 60th birthday on April 28th, 2023, the Grimsrud Scholarship is awarded to promising young writers in Scandinavia. The first edition of the scholarship was adjudicated by Norwegian writer Eivind Hofstad Evjemo, Swedish journalist and translator Yukiko Duke, and Danish poet Maja Lee Langvad.

As its first recipient, Aaiún Nin was praised by the jury for ‘opening a large space for readers, spanning history and continents’ and ‘mobilising the reader to political vigilance through representations of the human in both power and in vulnerability’.

Commenting further on Aaiún Nin’s work, the jury highlight the strong interconnection between the personal and political. They point out that ‘Aaiún’s poems are filled with both political anger and resignation, but also shine in the description of beauty, pleasure, and sexuality’. The fact that Nin is an Angolan writer, whose first poetry collection was published in Denmark and in Danish clearly fits within the Scholarship’s mandate, challenging existing categories, structures, and authorities, and breaking boundaries.

The Grimsrud Scholarship was established by Beate Grimsrud’s family and will award 50,000 Norwegian Krone to a young promising Scandinavian writer for three years in a row in her memory after she passed away in 2020. The rationale behind the scholarship is Beate Grimsrud’s own dependence on grants as a young writer, underlining the important support young writers need to continue their work. Grimsrud went on to become an award-winning author, writing her books of many genres in both Norwegian and Swedish. Some of her most notable works include En dåre fri (2010) and Jeg foreslår at vi våkner (2020).

Aaiún Nin is a poet, activist, and mixed media artist from Angola whose works explores and confronts issues of gender, race, and sexuality, whether in the context of postcolonial Africa or through the experiences of migrants in Europe. In 2016, Nin moved to Denmark where they lived and published their first poetry collection in Danish På min huds sorthed (2021).

Following the decriminalisation of same-sex relations in Angola, the Danish Refugee Board refused to grant Nin asylum in Denmark, despite the ongoing risk of persecution of openly LGBTQI+ people. As a result, Aaiún moved to Kraków, Poland where she was the ninth ICORN resident between 2021 and 2023, publishing their second poetry collection Broken Halves of a Milky Sun (2022). Nin is currently living in Bern, Switzerland as the city’s second ICORN resident (2023- 2025).