Maija Haavisto

I started working as a journalist at the age of 16. In the past I've been a regular contributor to computer and interior decoration magazines. Currently I write for music, health/fitness and vegan publications. I am also a columnist for the disability magazine Tukilinja.

I've wanted to be an author since the age of five and I wrote my first manuscript at fourteen. In October 2011 this dream finally came true with the publication of my debut novel Marian ilmestyskirja (Maria's Book of Revelations) from Muruja. It is the first book in a trilogy of cripfic novels - cripfic is a term I coined for fiction about people with disabilities, realistic fiction, no inspirational crap. I'm utopistic enough to hope I can find an international publisher for it. I am also planning to adapt it into a play.

Besides my novels and short stories, disability and chronic illness also play a major part in my non-fiction writing. I've had two medical textbooks published on the subject in Finland. I write medical articles and do medical translation. My first textbook in 2009 was about Twitter and I have a food-related book coming out in 2012.

Outside of novels my fiction tends to be very short, rarely over 1,000 words, and mostly it is drabbles (stories of exactly 100 words) and 55-word stories. I also write poetry and essays. Not surprisingly they, too, often touch upon the subject of chronic illness and disability. Most of my prose could be classified as scifi/speculative fiction (or sometimes slipstream), but of social, surreal and/or philosophical kinds, I don't like "hard" scifi.

While originally Finnish, I now live with my husband in Amsterdam, very happy to have got away from the nightmare of Finland. Besides reading, writing I enjoy cooking, traveling, photography, indoor gardening and trying to make the world a better place.

My website
On Twitter
My writing blog (only in Finnish)