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	Johanna tells us that writing today is much about promoting yourself. “You have to promote yourself a lot,” she says. “It requires confidence, verbal ability and that you enjoy being on stage. Today’s writing is a lot about going to different events and letting yourself be seen and heard.” But this is not any problem for Johanna. She loves being on stage. Though enough seems to be enough. “I like to perform and be on the stage, but I still want to keep my integrity,” she says firmly. She is not often recognized by people on the street today. There were more people who used to recognize her when she was living in Uppsala, as she was still fresh-published with her first books, but not in Stockholm, she says and she seems to be happy with that. Johanna left the students’ city Uppsala for Stockholm. Uppsala was actually the city where she was born, although she grew up in Dalarna. “It was too small,” she says referring to Uppsala. And establishes the fact that she can’t live in a small town. “I need to live in a town where things happen.” When we ask Johanna about her favorite authors she drops so many names of books and writers at once that I have trouble keeping up with writing them down. She speaks passionate about ‘De små tingens Gud” by Arundhati Roy. “It is very elegant,” she says. “Like being refreshed by cold water, yet still sensitive.” Other favorites are ‘De kanske lämpade’ by Peter Høeg, ‘Vindspejare’ by Agneta Pleijel, ‘Regn’ by Kirsty Gunn and the works of the Swedish writer Jonas Gardell. “Regn (Swedish for rain) is fantastic,” she continues. “It has this wet feeling through all of the book... you can almost feel it.” Last year she studied at Stockholm School of Economics, just as the head character Stella in Johanna's latest novel “Rebell med frusna fötter” (Rebel with Cold Feet). Johanna always takes inspiration for her books from her real life. “I start with myself,” she says. “And then I build atop of that.” And you can easily see the change she has gone trough over the years through her three books. She starts of with ten year old Hanna. Hanna is afraid, sad and lonely. She has a hard time with her classmates at school and none of the grownups seems to be able or willing to notice any of her problems. The first book is also the first step, an insight into herself. It continues with Fanny. “She wears her thorns on the outside,” Johanna says. Compared to Hanna Fanny has more confidence. She is lonely just like Hanna but she is not sad or afraid - she is angry. In Johanna’s third and latest novel we meet Stella. Stella actually has no real problem, as Johanna puts it, other than that she doesn’t really know what she is doing studying at Stockholm School of Economics. Stella is strong within herself although she is still figuring out how to adjust to the rest of the world. This is no longer a book of insight but rather a book of beholding our society and the people within it. Stella is young and still a seeker, not really knowing what she wants. But she is looking and maybe she understands she’ll find it sooner or later. Whatever it is. I ask Johanna how her parents reacted on her books and Johanna says it was a bit hard handling their reaction on her first novel. “Mom read it right away and wanted a full report on what had really happened and what had not.” But Johanna doesn’t like having to slice and dice her novels into did happen and did not. “In one way or the other it’s all a part of me,” she says. Her dad didn’t read the book right away. “He’s not as good as mom with handling emotional stuff,” Johanna says. “He had a hard time with the novel at first, but he’s read it now.” But Johanna doesn’t seem to have the urge for talking about these things with her parents. Maybe she did when she still was writing about Hanna. But that’s over and Hanna is in the past. As the final question I ask her about her hero. “Can I name only one?” she says and I shrug my shoulders. “Well... bring on as many as you like.” “Grandpa (on father's side) and grandma (on mother's side),” she says. “Grandpa is dead now. He died when I was nine. I hardly knew him, I only have a weak recognition of him, but he was very kind.” And she explains that she has the feeling that he understood her in a way that others did not. “I feel that I’ve been seen by him,” Johanna says. “Grandma is still alive,” Johanna continues. “But she’s been ill a lot. The thing is that although she’s been near death a lot of times she still sees things in a positive matter. She’s one of the strongest people I know. I want to be like her,” Johanna says and the sun is still shining strong outside at Sergel’s square. We finish our coffee and I ask Johanna to write down her favorite writers – as I give her my notepad – before we go outside to take some final photos. We take the escalators to the bottom floor. We shoot. We say good bye. And we part. Johanna disappears into the slow jungle of people and somewhere in the distance I think I see Hanna and Fanny and Stella. And maybe Ela is there with them as well.
	mirash
	Read an extract from Rebel with Cold Feet
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