Profile:
Malin Kivelä (1974) is a novelist from Helsinki, Finland. So far she has published three novels as well as plays and children’s books. She is also involved in the performance field. In her writing she tries to explore new forms, develop a kind of a physical writing, rather than relying on the perfect narrational story. She is interested in the things in life that are left aside, not talked about, not considered important, often not even noticed, which actually take up a lot of our time as human beings and which are often being hidden, out of shame or fear of being uninteresting.

Residence plan:
During her residency in Youkobo Malin will continue working on her fourth novel, a minimalist piece about a surfing cardiologist and a mother of a newborn child with a congenital heart disease as well as researching and preparing for the new performance I AM A NINJA with her colleague Hannele Mikaela Taivassalo.
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Profile:
Hannele Mikaela Taivassalo (1974) writes mainly prose, but also children's literature and drama. Taivassalo has also written several plays for the stage as well as four scripts for radio drama. The latest performance play Imperfekt, written and performed by Taivassalo and Malin Kivelä, had it’s opening night at the Finnish Institute in Berlin, Germany 2014. She has also published her essays and short stories in different anthologies, magazines and newspapers.
Her fourth novel, In transit, was published this autumn 2016. She has been awarded the Runeberg Prize, a national literary award in Finland, for her novel Fem knivar hade Andrej Krapl. She is also active within The Swedish Writers’ Union of Finland, and is the Artistic Director of the literarature festival Vasa LittFest, Finland. She is one of the chief editors of the literary magazine plump, and teaches Creative Writing at Åbo Akademi University. Born and lives in Finland, writes in her mother tongue Swedish.

Residence plan:
I will spend my first week at the residence together with my colleague Malin Kivelä, as we will be working on a joint project, a performance piece called I AM NINJA. We will do research and planning, as well as writing the play. The residence period will also include a smaller performance demo. The rest of the month, while I am alone, is dedicated to my own writing two projects: one is a fragmentary novel concerning limits, bounds, borders and borderline, the other one is a still a secret project of mine.

Date	2016.11.02 - 2016.11.30
Place	Residence-3