Vappu Kannas

I am at the Saari Residence to write my fourth novel. Its working title is “Pomology”, and it will be a historical novel based in 19^th-century Finland. My subject is the history of fruit cultivation and tree nursery, which I mostly explore from the perspective of different varieties of apple. This is an experimental project, and my goal is to write not about human destinies but other living things, such as plants, fruits and orchards. I am spending my residency researching the topic and writing the first draft of my manuscript. This project is a departure from my usual style, as my two previous historical novels, which form a loose trilogy with this new one, are based on real historical characters and explore human relationships and emotions. My goal with this new manuscript is to shift focus from people to the world of plants.’

Vappu Kannas (born in 1984) is a writer and literary scholar. She has a PhD and wrote her doctoral dissertation on the journals of L.M. Montgomery. Kannas’s first publication was a collection of poems, called Morsian (‘The Bride’), in 2018. She has also published two novels: Rosa Clay in 2020 and Kirjeitä Japaniin (‘Letters to Japan’) in 2021. Kannas’s third novel, Kimalaisten kirja (‘The Book of Bumblebees’), will be out in June 2023. Her poems, essays and short stories have been published in literary magazines in both Finland and North America. Kannas writes in Finnish and English and likes to balance on the boundaries between different genres.