Maija Makinen by Shuhei Fujii
Nationality: Finnish
Field of Art: Literary Arts / Writer
Hailing from a family of migrants, Finnish-born Maija Mäkinen grew up nestled next to the Soviet Union and moved to the US when she was young. Her debut story collection, THE GHOSTS OF OTHER IMMIGRANTS, was published in 2023 by New American Press, and her work has appeared in The Iowa Review, Porter House Review, and Berlin’s SAND Journal, among others. Awarded the Iowa Review Award in Fiction, the University of Cambridge Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize and the Nadia Christensen Prize in Translation, she has also received writing fellowships from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Key West Literary Seminar, Art Omi, Monson Arts, VCCA, the Studios of Key West, and Finland’s Kone Foundation. She is a graduate of the Boston University Creative Writing Program. She lives in Brooklyn.