About

I am the author of many works of fiction and nonfiction, including Blue Windows: A Christian Science Childhood (Picador 1997); The Palace of the Snow Queen: Winter Travels in Lapland (Counterpoint, 2007; University of Minnesota 2023) and The Pirate Queen: In Search of Grace O’Malley and Other Legendary Women of the Sea (Seal Press, 2004). I was also co-founder and publisher of Seal Press, in addition to writing mysteries under the name Barbara Wilson.
I am a translator from Norwegian and Danish, including Emilie Demant Hatt’s With the Lapps in the High Mountains: A Woman Among the Sami 1907-08 (University of Wisconsin Press, 2013) and Demant Hatt's collection of Sami folktales, By the Fire (University of Minnesota, 2019). My latest book is From Lapland to Sapmi: Collecting and Returning Sami Craft and Culture (University of Minnesota, 2023). My essays have appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Smithsonian, American Scholar, and many other journals.

Featured Work

From Lapland to Sapmi: Collecting and Returning Sami Craft and Culture

2023

A cultural history of Sápmi and the Nordic countries as told through objects and artifacts

The story of the Indigenous Sámi living in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia unfolds across borders and centuries, in museums and private collections. Deftly written and amply illustrated, From Lapland to Sápmi brings to light the history of collecting, displaying, and returning Sámi material culture, as well as the story of Sámi creativity and individual and collective agency.

Other Works

  • Love Dies Twice

    2022

  • Not the Real Jupiter

    2021

  • By the Fire: Sami Folktales and Legends

    2019

  • Black Fox: Artist and Ethnographer Emilie Demant Hatt

    2017

  • With the Lapps in the High Mountains

    2013

  • The Palace of the Snow Queen: Winter Travels in Lapland

    2007

  • The Palace of the Snow Queen

    2007

  • Incognito Street

    2006

  • The Pirate Queen

    2004

  • Blue Windows: A Christian Science Childhood

    1997

  • Gaudi Afternoon

    1990

  • Murder in the Collective

    1984

Awards and Recognition

  • Blue Windows: A Christian Science Childhood (1997) was a finalist for the PEN USA award and received a Lambda Literary Award for best lesbian memoir. The Pirate Queen: In Search of Grace O’Malley and Other Legendary Women of the Sea (2004) was also short-listed for the PEN USA award. Gaudi Afternoon won a Lambda Literary Award, as well as a British Crime Writers Award. Sjoholm received a Columbia Translation award for her first translation, Cora Sandel: Selected Short Stories (1984) and the Nadia Christiansen award from the American-Scandinavian award for Clearing Out, a novel by Norwegian writer Helene Uri (2018). She has also received a translation fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. For her historical novel, Fossil Island (2015), she received the Best Indie award from the Historical Novel Society. In 2020 she was honored with a Trailblazer award by the Golden Crown Literary Society for her contributions to lesbian literature.