Anna Rühl was awarded the Aurora Borealis Prize for the outstanding paper in literary and cultural studies by a graduate student delivered at the 2015 conference of the Society for the Advancment of Scandinavian Study held in Columbus, OH. The title of the award-winning paper was “‘Jeg vil gjerne skrive som en kvinne’: Nature, Place, and Gender in Tomas Espedal’s Imot kunsten (2009).” The award was announced at the 2016 meeting of SASS, April 28-30 in New Orleans, LA. The paper derived from Rühl's Ph.D. dissertation, "Selvgeografi’ – Placing the Works of Karl Ove Knausgård and Tomas Espedal," which analyzed the role of place in the semi-autobiographical novels of Norwegian sriters Karl Ove Knausgård and Tomas Espedal. The dissertation chair was Professor Emeritus Jan Sjåvik. Anna Rühl is now Acting Administrative Coordinator at the Rachel Carson Center Center for Environment and Society in Munich, Germany.