Hanna Meretoja

Hanna Meretoja is an internationally renowned literary scholar, a professor of comparative literature, and narrative theorist whose work has been published by prestigious academic publishers. Her monographs include The Ethics of Storytelling: Narrative Hermeneutics, History, and the Possible (2018, Oxford University Press). Her work is mainly in the fields of narrative studies, cultural memory studies, and trauma studies. As a novelist, Meretoja has a unique lyrical voice that seamlessly threads cultural theory and philosophy into a poetic, ruptured narrative with an acute sense of lived experience.

Maria Turtschaninoff

Maria Turtschaninoff is known for crafting lyrical, historically inspired fantasy stories starring strong female protagonists. In addition to J.R.R. Tolkien, she counts Philip Pullman, Ursula K. Le Guin and C.S. Lewis among her favorite authors. She is a two-time winner of the Society of Swedish Literature Prize, winner of the Swedish YLE Literature Prize, winner of the Thank You for the Book Award, a nominee for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (2020-2024), and winner of the 2014 Finlandia Junior Prize. In 2024, Maria Turtschaninoff won the Eeva Joenpelto Literary Prize (10,000 euro award) for her literary masterpiece Inherited Land.

Her Red Abbey Chronicles YA trilogy has been sold into 30 languages, while her first adult novel Inherited Land has been sold to 23 territories. Maria has a Master of Arts in human ecology and works full-time as a writer.

Martta Kaukonen

Martta Kaukonen (1976) lives in Helsinki. Before becoming a full-time author, she worked as a film critic, whose reviews have been published in both Finland’s biggest newspaper Helsingin Sanomat and a popular women’s weekly magazine Me Naiset. Martta has a master’s degree in arts. She has interviewed the likes of Robert Downey Jr. and Justin Bieber. Martta met her husband at his second hand bookshop and fell in love. Alongside writing, Martta loves psychological thrillers, film noir, flea markets, abandoned houses and travelling. Martta’s debut novel FOLLOW THE BUTTERFLY was published in March 2021. FOLLOW THE BUTTERFLY is an Instagram sensation in Finland, and the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper released a highly-praising review of it. During the first two months, the audiobook was listened to an awe-inspiring 2000 times and over. FOLLOW THE BUTTERFLY  has been compared to Gillian Flynn’s novel ‘Gone Girl’. 

Riikka Pulkkinen

Riikka Pulkkinen (b. 1980) is one of the top names in Finnish literature. Her debut novel The Limit (2006) gained wide attention, was a bestseller, and was adapted into a play and a TV series in Finland. Her international breakthrough came with her second novel, True (2010), which was the one novel everyone was talking about that year at the Frankfurt book fair. The novel has been published in 17 countries to date.

Pulkkinen’s novels are characterized by the precision with which she describes the psychology of the characters, and the philosophical themes that reflect from the characters into the refined structure of the novels and culminate on the level of the plot. The main questions she explores in her novels concern power, responsibility, and justice.

Pulkkinen has an M.A. in Literary Studies from the University of Helsinki, and she lives in Helsinki with her husband and her two children. She enjoys dancing and running in the forest or by the seaside. If she weren’t a writer, she would be a psychologist or a baker.

For her works, Riikka Pulkkinen has received the Kaarle award in 2007, the Laila Hirvisaari Fund stipend in 2007, the Veijo Meri Award in 2019, and her novel True was nominated for the Finlandia Prize in 2010.

Vera Vala

Vera Vala’s roots are in Finnish forests, but her soul belongs to Italy, where she has been living for over 25 years. She has an infinite thirst for knowledge that has taken her to study various academic subjects from Physics to Assyriology and Romance Languages, and the information acquired during those years has been useful as background research for her novels.

Vera’s adventurous spirit has taken her from diving with sharks while living in Seychelles to rafting in Italian Alps and exploring the shadier parts of her former hometown, Rome: the diverse experiences have come in handy while creating intriguing plot twists.

Currently, Vera lives with her family in Milan where she is studying to become a clinical psychologist with a special interest in Forensic Psychology. Vera creates novel scenes in her mind while cooking Italian meals, and she loves slow chess games and meditation.