Ragde was born in Odda and made her literary debut in 1986 with the children’s book Hallo!
Since then, she has written several books for children and young adults, among them a biography about Sigrid Undset, for which she was awarded the Brage Prize.
Her novel Berlin Poplars received a warm welcome from both readers and critics,[citation needed] and has so far sold more than 250 000 copies in Norway, and is translated to more than 15 languages.
In 2010 a Norwegian tabloid Dagens Næringsliv article covering ebook copyright violation, Ragde commented when asked about her own lifestyle stance to unauthorized items, that she had bought a counterfeited Prada handbag, her son Jo further added "You have a pirated MP3 collection, we copied the first 1500 songs from one place and 300 from another".
Ragde had earlier in the interview expressed great concern over the online ebook file sharing and claimed "I have figured out that I’ve lost half a million kroner ($72,500) on piracy of my books, maybe more".