Black Hole Autumn event 8.11.2022 | Speakers

Katharina Braun is Editorial Director Children’s Fiction of arsEdition in Munich, Germany. Her educational background includes a Magister in German and French literature from the University of Freiburg. Being in love with children’s books her whole life, Katharina joined the publishing industry in 2002. She has worked at Egmont, Random House and arsEdition where she has published authors including Rachel Renée Russell, Liz Pichon, Jonathan Stroud and Shannon Messenger. Outside the office, she’s committed to music, food and languages. Katharina is fluent in English and French and speaks a little Spanish. She‘s always looking to brush up her language skills over coffee and drinks.

I’m the Literary Agent responsible for Children’s & YA books at Bonnier Rights Finland. I’ve worked in publishing for over twenty years, initially in the UK. I’ve represented Finnish works, all genres, first at Tammi, later at WSOY. For the past ten years I’ve had the joy of focussing on Children’s and Young Adult books.

Pia Kaitasuo, Master of Arts and Master of Arts and Cultural Management, has been working as a journalist in Kaleva Media for over 20 years. She is focusing her writing mainly on arts and culture and specializing in creating profiles on people of that area. Pia Kaitasuo is a member of the jury of the Botnia Literature Prize.

An author and a family man, a mathematician by education, studied also literature, philosophy and business administration. Writes funny but weird novels about offices and goblins.

Sanna Pelliccioni is a Finnish illustrator and children’s author and graphic designer living in Helsinki with her Finnish-Italian family. Pelliccioni utilizes many different techniques in her illustrations, some of her favourites are collage and mixed techniques. She studied Arts and Illustration in Bologna and Macerata, Italy, and Graphic Design at the Pekka Halonen Institute in Finland.

She loves illustrating picture books and poems and makes graphic design for her own books. Pelliccioni writes for children and young people and concerning the themes of books she’s especially interested in equality, indigenous people, myths and taboos, forest and nature. Pelliccioni is mostly known for her Onni-poika picture book series which started in 2007 and contains 18 books so far.

​Pelliccioni collaborates with authors writing for children and young people and works various Finnish editors. Some of her books have been translated to Chinese, Korean, Arabic, English and Swedish, Turkish and Estonian.

Katja Törmänen is a writer and creative writing teacher from Oulu. She is a history teacher by training. Törmänen writes because it opens up vistas she could never see in real life and adventures she would probably never dare participate in, even if given the chance. She writes fantasy because it lets her approach what is true in this world. Most fundamentally, she writes because when writing, she is free. Törmänen is currently writing the third part of her series that began with “The Bear’s Bride” (Karhun morsian).