Nilsonne, Åsa

Åsa Nilsonne is a Swedish psychiatrist, translator and crime writer. She was born in Stockholm, but as the daughter of a diplomat she spent much of her childhood abroad. Oslo, Beirut and Addis Ababa are some of the cities she has lived in. She lived in Ethiopia between the ages of nine and fifteen, and she still travels there frequently in real life as well as in her novels. When she returned from Ethiopia, Nilsonne attended the Sigtuna School, a private institution, while her family were living in Thailand. She later studied medicine, became a physician and has worked as a psychiatrist and researcher. She has worked at the St. Göran hospital in Stockholm and as a senior professor of medical psychology at the Karolinska Institute, specialising in women with borderline personality disorder. As a psychiatrist, Nilsonne was an early practitioner of dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT), and she is a prominent advocate of mindfulness.