Gunilla Vigert

GUNILLA VIGERT lives deep in the Swedish archipelago, 90 km north of Stockholm, surrounded by forests, the sea, and thousands of islands. In the 1990s, she published a long series of bilingual educational materials, including a bilingual reading primer, Adam’s Book (1989), which has been translated and published in several countries. She has also written scripts for a series of language development children’s programs for deaf children produced by Swedish Educational Broadcasting (Utbildningsradion). Gunilla has over forty years of experience working in the deaf community and considers Swedish Sign Language her second language.

Since last summer, Gunilla has embarked on a new path as an author. She enjoys writing in various genres and for different purposes—sometimes to highlight pressing societal issues, and sometimes simply to offer the reader a moment of escape from the stress and challenges of everyday life.

In 2023, she made her fiction debut with the autofictional novel De ville mig väl (They Meant Well, roughly translated). The novel invites the reader into a world unfamiliar to most—where everyone communicates through sign language, the deaf world. It is set in the 1960s and 70s, a time when sign language was banned in schools for the deaf, and when parents were discouraged from using it with their children, under the false belief that it would hinder speech development. The novel is based on a true story and was written in close collaboration with Åsa Gustavsson, who is deaf herself and grew up during the same era as the book’s protagonist.

The novel sheds light on a highly relevant global issue—how an overreliance on technology and ideals of inclusion (normalization) today often results in deaf and hard-of-hearing children being denied access to sign language, despite the vast opportunities it could open for them. They Meant Well is the first part of a trilogy titled Stina’s Journey Through Life. The purpose of the series is to document and give an accurate portrayal of the lives of deaf people from 1960 to 2010, a transformative period in deaf history. The aim is partly for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals to see their own experiences reflected in the story, and partly to help caregivers and professionals gain a deeper understanding of the deaf and signing world and its history. Finally, the authors hope to reach the general public and offer a glimpse into a hidden world that exists close to us but is rarely seen. They hope the books will help prevent ignorance and misguided care from once again depriving deaf and hard-of-hearing children of access to sign language and the deaf community.

In 2023, Gunilla also published a children’s book, Malte, the Bat Boy—a story about a young boy who saves a bat habitat from the dangers of human light pollution.

In 2025, she will release two light-hearted novels perfect for reading in a hammock: Her Name is Ella and There’s a Shortage of Hugs in Cyberspace. Meanwhile, Gunilla and Åsa are working on the next installment in the Stina series.