As a child, she enjoyed making up stories that her mother, a teacher and painter, would write down and read back to her.

[2][3] Before Nors' literary debut in her own name, she worked as a translator of Swedish crime novels, mostly books by author Johan Theorin.

[3] Her English-language following began in 2009, when selections from her short story collection Karate Chop were published in English.

In 2015, her first short story collection Karate Chop was published in English alongside So Much for That Winter, a joint publication of her novellas Minna Needs Rehearsal Space and Days.

In 2017, she was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize for her novel Mirror, Shoulder, Signal.