Dilşa Demirbağ Sten

Dilşa Demirbağ Sten — Biography

Dilşa Demirbağ-Sten is a prominent Swedish journalist and author, known for her writing on integration, women's rights, honour violence and multiculturalism. She is the secretary general of the foundation Berättarministeriet and has been a member of the Swedish Press Council since 2019; in April 2019 she was also appointed to the board of the Nobel Center Foundation.

Born into a Kurdish family in Elazığ, she settled in Sweden with her family in 1976 and studied political science and history at Stockholm University. She entered journalism by writing for Swedish outlets such as Expressen, Dagens Nyheter, Göteborgs-Posten, Östgöta Correspondenten, Fokus and Axess; she wrote a book for Non-Violence Sweden, worked at the National Swedish Touring Theatre and at Amnesty International, and served as a special adviser to the then Minister for Integration, Leif Blomberg. Her books include Svenska – en nödvändighet (1995), Stamtavlor (2005) and Fosterland (2010); she also contributed to collections such as Makten framför allt and Tystade röster and wrote Till frihetens försvar with Per Bauhn. She co-founded Berättarministeriet in 2011 with Robert Weil and Sven Hagströmer.

For Fosterland she received Natur & Kultur's Johan Hansson Prize; she was awarded the Frihetspennan in memory of Torgny Segerstedt in 2012, an Astrid Lindgren scholarship in 2017, the St. Erik medal for Stockholm County in 2018 and the KTH Great Prize in 2019. Her sisters Dee and Dilba Demirbağ are well-known performers in Sweden.