BARBRO KARLÉN was born in Sweden in 1954. Her first book, Man on Earth, published when she was 12, became the bestselling poetry book of all time in Sweden. Over the next five years, nine further volumes of her prose and poetry were published.

She worked as a mounted policewoman for eighteen years, and has trained and competed in equestrian dressage for over thirty years. Her autobiography "And the Wolves Howled" has recently been published to much acclaim.