Eva Apelqvist grew up in Stockholm, Sweden, in a high-rise, a building with nine stories, four apartments on each floor, and an average of two kids per apartment (though there were four in her tiny, two-bedroom apartment). There was always someone to play with ... and someone to step over in the entryway.

A monster lived in the trash chute in her building. She learned to run by the chute quickly so the round metal door wouldn’t creak open and the monster’s long arm come out and grab her.

Even then, when she was a young kid, scared of the trash chute, and the elevator, and of the mean woman on the second floor, she loved the stories she found around her, and she would rise early in the morning, before her three siblings were awake, and write her stories down.

A 17-year-old senior in high school, Apelqvist came to Wisconsin as an exchange student. She was already mesmerized by the English language, which, compared to Swedish, spoken only by nine million people, held endless potential with its enormous vocabulary. But she also fell in love with Wisconsin, with her host family, and, three days before returning to Sweden, with her future (American) husband.

Years later, after more schooling, and a year in Paris as a nanny, she returned as an exchange student to Gustavus Adolphus College for a year. This time, when she went back to Sweden, her future husband accompanied her. In 1987, she immigrated to America.

Apelqvist began writing at the age of five—gruesome poetry about death and destruction, and the monster in the trash chute—and, though her stories grew gradually less gruesome, she never stopped. Now she writes children’s magazine stories (Highlights for Children, Spider Magazine, Winner Magazine, New Moon, Jack and Jill, etc), local and national magazine and newspaper articles for adults, short romance for a Swedish women’s weekly magazine (Allers veckotidning), young adult and middle grade novels, and anything else that interests her. Her first novel for young adults, Swede Dreams, was released by Penguin in 2007.

Apelqvist lives with her family in a small town in Northern Wisconsin. She loves doing school visits and welcomes inquiries about her school programs and presentations.

Swede Dreams
Penguin, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-14-240746-2

Calista Swanson is excited to travel to Sweden as an exchange student. Not only will she finally get to be her own person, out of the shadow of her annoyingly perfect twin sister Suzanne, but she’ll get to spend time with her boyfriend, Jonas, whom she met when he was an exchange student at her high school in Moon Lake, Wisconsin.

But when Calista arrives at her host family’s home in Stockholm, Jonas doesn’t return her phone calls. Has something happened to him?