Aevar Thor Benediktsson (1984) is an actor and author, best know in Iceland for his work as Aevar the scientist (in TV, radio and books) and for his bestselling "Your very own"-series of books, where the reader takes an active role in shaping the storyline. He has written more than 30 published books, along with plays, TV-series and radio-plays.

The rights to some of Aevar's work has been sold to publishers around the world, for example in Russia, Denmark, Sweden, Saudi-Arabia and Serbia. His first book in english, STRANDED!, will be published by Barefoot Books in 2023.

Aevar has won several awards for his work, including the Icelandic Children's Book Awards, The Bookseller's Awards, four Edda-awards for his TV-show and a special award, by the Ministry of culture and education, in recognition of his contribution to work on the Icelandic language.

He was nominated for the Icelandic Literary Prize for Children and YA Books in 2016 (The Robot Attack) and 2017 (Your Very Own Fairytale)  and was finalist and first International Selection of the DeBary Outstanding Children’s Book Awards in 2016 (Dinosaurs in Reykjavik) and 2018 (The Robot Attack). His book, Your Very Own Underwater Adventure is on the 2022 IBBY Honour List.
 

In 2015-2019 Ævar launched annual nation-wide reading challenges for every child in Iceland between the ages of 5-16. At the end of each challenge five participants were randomly selected and as a reward got to be characters in the book series"The Young Adventures of Aevar the Scientist". Over 330 thousand books were read in the five challenges. In both 2017 and 2018 he was nominated for the ALMA awards, as a "Promoter of reading".

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In 2021 he launched another reading challenge for the whole country of Iceland, but this time in the form of a one-chapter-a-day-horror-story, called Last Day of School. This challenge is still going on, doing it's third round in October 2023.

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In 2017 Ævar was chosen as one of the Aarhus39 - a collection of the 39 best emerging writers for young people from across Europe. In 2018 he was shortlisted for Booktrust's In Other Words-prize (Dinosaurs in Reykjavík).

 

In January of 2021 he was named Iceland's first goodwill ambassador for the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF. Ambassadors choose their own specialist area, with Ævar choosing to concentrate on children’s rights to education and culture.

 

Ævar currently lives in Reykjavík, Iceland, with his fiancée, 4 year old son and a cat named Elvis.