About Me

As a child, I devoured stories of faraway lands. Through them, I discovered that the pathway to understanding people from different cultures was to look for things they had in common rather than what set them apart from me. Finding connection to people became my passion. In my early teens, I left my safe little bubble in Helsinki and ventured out to the great big world, eventually landing in Paris.

At the age of twenty one, I returned to Finland and enrolled in the Helsinki Business School. Two years later I founded a contemporary art sale and services company, but despite the initial success I had to close down the business after five years when the whole western world fell into a deep recession.

I decided to go back to school to study philosophy. One morning as I was working on an essay on rhetoric, it dawned on me that I was actually writing my first book. It was a philosophical study into my own coming-of-age. End of Restlessness was published by a Finnish publisher (WSOY) and after publishing another book, this time a young adult novel, I switched to English.

The Rise Up Trilogy was inspired by my fifteen-year stint as a volunteer in Helsinki Red Cross Youth Shelter. In a world that is turning into an increasingly hostile place for any minority, we need stories that evoke diversity, friendship, human decency, and the courage to listen to your heart.

Besides my husband, I love novels in Russian about the Soviet life, French pop, snowboarding, sampling vegan delights across the world, and spending time with our brazen, eclectic  group of friends and family.