Elisabeth Åsbrink is a journalist and multi-award-winning author. Her book 1947 won the prestigious Letterstedt Prize and has been translated into 19 languages. Her latest book is Made in Sweden.Deborah Bragan-Turner is a literary translator working from Swedish to English. She has a degree in Scandinavian Languages from University College London, and has been a research assistant in the British Library, an academic librarian in a UK university, and an independent bookseller in France. Deborah has translated a range of genres for a number of UK and US publishers and many sample extracts for literary agents in Sweden. She was the editor of Swedish Book Review, the journal of SELTA, from 2015 to 2020.Gloria Ray Karlmark has a degree in chemistry and mathematics and has worked as a systems analyst and patent engineer, with positions at IBM and Philips in the Netherlands. She moved to Sweden in 1969, and has mainly lived there since then. Her story has never before been told in book form.

‘Gloria Ray is a gripping story of the fourteen-year-old young lady who was one of the nine brave souls in 1957 who desegregated Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas, amid gun-toting federal agents and raw hatred and intimidation from screaming adults. The book takes us behind the media coverage to understand what it took for Gloria to be there and how the experience of striving for her dreams within a hostile environment affected her life. Learning about what shaped her, and how she dealt with the mental and emotional challenges of taking on the full weight of an entire social structure that resented her presence, humanises the burden and struggle of being “the first.”’

Elisabeth Åsbrink is a journalist and multi-award-winning author. Her book 1947 won the prestigious Letterstedt Prize and has been translated into 19 languages. Her latest book is Made in Sweden.Deborah Bragan-Turner is a literary translator working from Swedish to English. She has a degree in Scandinavian Languages from University College London, and has been a research assistant in the British Library, an academic librarian in a UK university, and an independent bookseller in France. Deborah has translated a range of genres for a number of UK and US publishers and many sample extracts for literary agents in Sweden. She was the editor of Swedish Book Review, the journal of SELTA, from 2015 to 2020.Gloria Ray Karlmark has a degree in chemistry and mathematics and has worked as a systems analyst and patent engineer, with positions at IBM and Philips in the Netherlands. She moved to Sweden in 1969, and has mainly lived there since then. Her story has never before been told in book form.

‘Gloria Ray is a gripping story of the fourteen-year-old young lady who was one of the nine brave souls in 1957 who desegregated Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas, amid gun-toting federal agents and raw hatred and intimidation from screaming adults. The book takes us behind the media coverage to understand what it took for Gloria to be there and how the experience of striving for her dreams within a hostile environment affected her life. Learning about what shaped her, and how she dealt with the mental and emotional challenges of taking on the full weight of an entire social structure that resented her presence, humanises the burden and struggle of being “the first.”’

Elisabeth Åsbrink is a journalist and multi-award-winning author. Her book 1947 won the prestigious Letterstedt Prize and has been translated into 19 languages. Her latest book is Made in Sweden.Deborah Bragan-Turner is a literary translator working from Swedish to English. She has a degree in Scandinavian Languages from University College London, and has been a research assistant in the British Library, an academic librarian in a UK university, and an independent bookseller in France. Deborah has translated a range of genres for a number of UK and US publishers and many sample extracts for literary agents in Sweden. She was the editor of Swedish Book Review, the journal of SELTA, from 2015 to 2020.Gloria Ray Karlmark has a degree in chemistry and mathematics and has worked as a systems analyst and patent engineer, with positions at IBM and Philips in the Netherlands. She moved to Sweden in 1969, and has mainly lived there since then. Her story has never before been told in book form.

‘Gloria Ray is a gripping story of the fourteen-year-old young lady who was one of the nine brave souls in 1957 who desegregated Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas, amid gun-toting federal agents and raw hatred and intimidation from screaming adults. The book takes us behind the media coverage to understand what it took for Gloria to be there and how the experience of striving for her dreams within a hostile environment affected her life. Learning about what shaped her, and how she dealt with the mental and emotional challenges of taking on the full weight of an entire social structure that resented her presence, humanises the burden and struggle of being “the first.”’