I always wanted to be a writer, even before I could write. My mother used to read me stories - I remember especially the ones by the Swedish author Astrid Lindgren - and as I listened to them, I knew I too wanted to be a storyteller. Whenever I walked, I would narrate novels in my head. One novel could keep on unfolding for months. This was before I knew how to write. My first written stories were simple ones about boats and animals, but already then, I enjoyed thinking about characters and developing them, taking them through all kinds of struggles.

In my work, I’m more drawn to writing about people than about any particular issues. I’m interested in families, relationships, personal conflicts. You could say my first novel is about migration and living in-between Romanian and Finnish cultures, but this is not a theme I decided to approach, rather something that surfaced as I wrote down anecdotes about my relatives and repurposed them into a novel. My current novel started with some anecdotes I heard about Danish immigrants in Nicaragua in the 1920s, and now my notes have developed into a novel where questions of home, language and colonialism arise.

Literature brings us together; it offers something to identify with. Readers are never alone. Equally important is the artistic value of literature, of course: reading a great novel or a short story or a poem is an aesthetic experience, a break from the everyday life that can change our perception of things. Today, when it comes to translated literature, it is maybe even more important than before to bring it forth: when so many countries are closing their borders and turning their gaze inward politically, we should, in culture, keep an open mind.

My second book The Union of Synchronised Swimmers, which I translated into English with the help of my partner, was published this year in Spanish (El equipo de natación sincronizada, Tres Hermanas, translated by Ainize Salaberri). It tells the story of six women who travel abroad to compete in a World Championship and disappear. It’s something between a short story collection and a novel, with each chapter a zoom into the life of a woman in a foreign country, in the midst of a new language and culture.

Coming from such a small country and as a writer who works in Finnish, I think Mexicans and Latin Americans are very lucky to be part of such a rich and extensive literary tradition, from novellas to crónicas, poetry and short stories. Latin America has one of the most original and important literatures in the world. I’m excited to celebrate it with you for a few days, and hopefully share something about our own, much smaller but special Finnish literary tradition.

I do think we can see literature, as any form of art, being a common experience in which people around the world and across different time periods participate. But also, in a very concrete sense, books create connections between people: through translations, literary events and international prizes. I myself have learned so much about Bolivia, Mexico and Guatemala, among others, through their literatures.