Guðrið Helmsdal was born in Tórshavn, the capital city of the Faroe Islands, in 1941. When she released Lýtt lot in 1963, she became the first woman to publish a volume of poetry written in the Faroese language; her debut collection also signaled a modernist breakthrough in Faroese literature. Helmsdal’s trailblazing contributions to Faroese letters earned her the M.A. Jacobsen Literature Award in 1974. Her most recent bilingual collection, Stjørnuakrar-Sternenfelder (2006), was published in Germany.