PÄR POROMAA ISLING is a senior lecturer, and writer. He grew up in Gällivare, a background that has shaped his academic and literary work, focusing on questions of class, minority identity, and place.

He has also been published in journals such as Kritiker, Provins, Meänmaa, and Tidskrift för genusvetenskap. In his literary writing, he explores the intersection of the personal and the societal, often with the Meänkieli-speaking minority as a backdrop.

His debut novel HOLLO will be published by Wahlström & Widstrand this autumn.

Agent: Erik Larsson

TO BE PUBLISHED AUGUST 2026, Wahlström & widstrand
genre LITERARY
PAGES 280

ALL RIGHTS AVAILABLE

HOLLO is a novel about carrying the north within you, no matter how far south you go.

Perhaps his friends were right: that he would never feel at ease here. Pekka lives in the tension between pride and shame, between belonging and estrangement. He tries to settle into a city that is both new and familiar, into the rhythms of university life, but something resists. The codes are unfamiliar. The markers of class are everywhere. Even the language feels slightly out of reach. Again and again, he finds himself on uncertain ground.

When he meets John, who sees him without hesitation, something begins, quietly, to shift. The world gathers itself differently around him. Is it possible for a person to become a place of belonging?