Welcome to Cultural Tendencies! This is my happy place. The newsletter explores our endlessly fascinating and frustrating world. Always curious, often funny, sometimes poignant. That’s not a niche, and that’s the point. Here are a few things that tend to pop up in my texts: (pop)culture, history, science, democracy, LGBTQ+, and AI. Basically, anything that tickles my fancy and hopefully yours.
What you get:
Free subscribers (which is all of you for now):
A newsletter now and then.
Access to the full archive.
Post comments and join the community.
Is that all? No, I have all sorts of plans, but let’s get into a nice rhythm with this first. Then, I’ll add on a few extras along the way. Drop me a line at anna@culturaltendencies.com, and let me know what you want to see here.
Who is Anna Troberg?
I’m an avid writer who has found my happy place on Substack.
I’m the elected President of the Swedish union DIK, but Cultural Tendencies is not work. It’s my happy place where I read, write and make new friends.
So, what led me here? It’s hard to say—everything and nothing. My first job was making creative wedding cakes. Then, became a fiction translator, the head of a publishing house, a publishing consultant, the Swedish Pirate Party’s leader, and Wikimedia Sweden’s Executive Director. Finally, I was elected President of the union DIK, which organises those who work in culture, communication and the creative industry. (Think librarians, archaeologists, museologists, translators, communicators, game creators, and everything in between.) A position I am still in and love every minute of.
Somewhere along the way, I also found time to write thousands of blog posts, hundreds of published articles, and a novel, Bosses from Hell (published in Sweden, Finland, and Norway). Somehow, this all led me to Substack. So, here I am.
When I don’t write, I speak - a lot. Too much, according to my wife. So, it’s very fortunate that I sometimes get to go and talk away from home, so she gets some peace. I have, for instance, given talks at the IFLA World Library and Information Congress in Helsinki, the ALIA (Australian Library Information Association) Conference in Brisbane, the Radio Vision Festival in New York, the Darklight Film Festival in Dublin, and Digikult in Gothenburg. I’ve also spoken at the European Parliament in Brussels, the Gothenburg Book Fair, the Swedish National Heritage Board’s annual conference and several Swedish Pride festivals.
A little bit more about me:
Lives: In an old Baptist Chapel south of Stockholm.
Family: A wife, four cats and a dog.
Fun facts: I run every day if I can. (My longest run streak was 808 days.) I love gaming, Dolly Parton, and Abba. Two life-size cardboard cutouts of Xena and Sarah Connor guard my home office. I collect signed photos of action heroines and signed first editions of Jeanette Winterson’s books. I love flea markets and buy weird bits and bobs that interest me, like a signal cannon, an old copper diving helmet, and an antique aeroplane propeller.
Anything more? Read the newsletter, and you’ll find out! ;-)
