For the media
—Contact me at 206-713-1260 or babutlerwall@gmail.com
Brita Butler-Wall is a Seattle writer passionate about Swedish emigration and heritage. She studied ethnography in Sweden and earned an M.A. in Scandinavian Studies and a Ph.D. from UCLA. She has published articles and given talks in Sweden and the U.S.A. Upheaval is her debut novel.
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As an education activist and mom fighting commercialism and junkfood in schools, Butler-Wall has been quoted in The New York Times, the Washington Post, Education Week, and The Nation. She has appeared on the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer and while Seattle School Board president, on local television and radio.
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Butler-Wall grew up in rural Oregon with visits to her mother’s home village of Bishop Hill, a former Swedish colony in Illinois, founded by a Swedish sect, the first mass migration from Sweden to America. Today the village is a state and national historic site with thousands of visitors every year.
A lifelong educator, Butler-Wall has taught Swedish, ESL, and linguistics at the college level, and spent most of her career educating language teachers in Seattle.
Since her days as a Vasa Rosebud in Portland, Butler-Wall has produced a documentary film about Scandinavian Christmas traditions in the Pacific Northwest that was shown in Sweden and on PBS along with instructional videos for her students of Swedish at the University of Washington.
Whether singing alto in the Swedish Women’s Chorus in Seattle, dancing the polska at Skandia Folkdance Society, or celebrating her 50th wedding anniversary at Seattle’s Swedish Club, Butler-Wall has been an enthusiastic member of the local Swedish community, for which she was awarded Carl XVI Gustaf’s Bicentennial Medal in silver.
She and husband Dave Wall reared two daughters who attended Seattle public school. Both are now professors in gender and communications studies, one at Kent State and one at Stanford.
Upheaval
A novel
Brita Butler-Wall
Publishing date
Historical novel
ISBN 979-8-9966620-0-5
330 pages
Birchleaf Press, © 2026
Interview Q-A
Is Upheaval a true story?
The novel is based on the story of my great-great-great grandmother and the people of her remote valley in northern Sweden in 1846. Nearly all the characters are based on actual people and historical events, but the story is fictional.
Why did you write Upheaval?
The book I wanted to read didn’t exist, so I had to write it. Other accounts of the Jansonist sect felt biased or incomplete. I wanted to show the impact of a rebellion on an ordinary family and what it meant to those who lived it.
How long did it take?
I spent 19 years doing archival research, interviews with Swedes, and site visits in Sweden. Learning to write fiction was the hardest part.
How is this novel relevant today?
In Upheaval, readers experience a rural society chafing under authorities until an outrageous outsider urges them to rebel, forcing everybody to question their beliefs, risk violence, and take sides.
Is there a sequel?
The sequel will be released in 2027. Journeying follows this young family across the sea as they struggle to reach Erik Jansson’s utopian colony on the prairie frontier.
Interviewing Swedish author and former Riksdagsman Hans Lindblad in Gävle, Sweden