PhD in Scandinavian Languages, Literary History and English 1962. Secondary school teacher of Swedish and English 1963-74. Received doctorate in 1979 with the thesis entitled Århundradets barn. Fenomenet Pippi Långstrump och dess förutsättningar (Child of the Century. The Phenomenon of Pippi Longstocking, and its Premises).
Retired from academia in 1999 to become a full-time writer, critic and speaker. Recent works include Pippi i Palestina (Pippi in Palestine, 2002), Kärlek, brott och skratt (Love, Crime and Laughter, 2002), the children's book Felicia och flugan (Felicia and the Fly, 2000) and two books for young people: Madigans Elin (Madigan's Elin 2001) and Madigan (1999). Her own reading experiences while growing up are recounted in Kulla-Gulla i slukaråldern (Kulla-Gulla in the Book Devouring Age - Girlhood Reading, 2000), with the title paraphrasing a popular series of books for young girls.
As well as writing, Ulla Lundqvist lectures on children's and youth literature in Sweden and abroad, helps train teachers of literary studies, and is a literary critic for Dagens Nyheter, Sweden's major daily newspaper. In 2000 she completed a three-year literature project on the Palestinian territory sponsored by the Swedish International Development Agency. Awarded the Gulliver Prize in 1995 by the Swedish section of IBBY (InternationalBoard of Books for Young People) for having increased the understanding of children's and young people's books.
Ulla Lundqvist is married to the editor Per Olof Köhler. She writes stories and cooks meals for two fair-haired grandsons born in 1994 and 1998.