Karin Boye (Karin Maria Boye, 26 October 1900 – 24 April 1941) was a Swedish writer.

She studied literary history, Greek and Scandinavian languages at Uppsala University.  From 1928 to 1930, Karin was a member of the anti-Fascist group Clarté League and of the student group Poets’ Corner. She also wrote for the student periodical Ergo. After earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in Uppsala, Boye got a Bachelor of Arts degree in history at the Stockholm University. Together with Erik Mesterton and Josef Riwkin, she started the literary magazine Spektrum in 1931.

In 1929, she married Leif Björck, another Clarté member, but they divorced in 1932, and Karin went to have a love relationship with Gunnel Bergström, wife of the poet Gunnar Ekelöf. While in Berlin, between 1932 – 1933, Boye met Margot Hanel, with whom she lived for the rest of her life.

Boye committed suicide in 1941, overdosing on sleeping pills. Shortly after Boyes’s death, Hanel also committed suicide, by gas poisoning.

Books

In English

• To a Friend, tr. Jenny Nunn (1985)
• Complete Poems, tr. David McDuff (1994)
  • Inwards (poem)
  • Songs About Fate (poem)
  • I Want to Meet (poem)
  • The World is Dreamt (poem)
  • The World’s Heart (poem)
  • The Stones (poem)
  • Walpurgis Night (poem)
  • Yes, of course it hurts (poem)
  • A Stillness Expanded (poem)
  • Ripe as  a fruit (poem)
• Kallocain, tr. Gustaf Lannstock (1996)

In Swedish

Novels

• Astarte, 1931
• Merit vaknar, 1933
• Kris, 1934
• För lite, 1936
• Kallocain, 1940

Poetry

• Moln, 1922
• Gömda land, 1924
• Härdarna, 1927
• För trädets skull, 1935
• De sju dödssynderna, 1941 (not completed, posthumous)