Marika Riikonen

Marika Riikonen is an author and journalist from Tampere - and also a perennial horse girl and humble servant to a cat. Riikonen has a master’s degree from the University of Tampere and she has studied Finnish literature, theater and drama, and communication studies. Her passions are reading - always and everywhere - , talking about books and the phenomena of life, and Roman pizza con patate.

Her literary career started in the early 2000s with speculative fiction short stories and progressed to editing anthologies and writing novels and non-fiction books. Her works include Ravilikat (Karisto 2020), a YA novel about harness racing; Hevostytöt (Art House 2020), a non-fiction title about horse girls; and Lasinen merenneito (Karisto 2021), an adventure novel set in Venice and the borders of reality. Riikonen has also written plays and appeared on stage.

As an editor and critic, Riikonen has oriented towards culture, especially children’s and YA literature. She is particularly proud of Finland’s only regularly published children’s and YA literature column, Sieppari, that has appeared in Hämeen Sanomat newspaper since 2006.