Anja Erämaja

Anja Erämaja (born 1963), originally from the Turku archipelago, lives in Helsinki. She studies in the Department of Photography at the University of Art and Design Helsinki and has done music in the Laulavat kahvinkeittäjät group. Her debut collection of prose poetry, Laulajan paperit (The Singer’s Papers), was published in 2005, and her second collection, Kuuluuko tämä teille (Does this Belong to You ) will be published in August 2009. Erämaja has also written and illustrated a children’s book entitled Hilu, Hippu ja äiti Valtava (The Iron, the Nugget and Mother Enormous, 2007). Lulu ja avaruuskoira (Lulu and the Space Dog), a children’s book she did with Ulla Virkamäki, was published in spring 2009.

‘In the blossoming early summer of 2008 at the Saari Residence I worked on my latest collection of prose poetry. I also wrote a number of little stories, one of which found its way the Lulu ja avaruuskoira children’s book. Occasionally my own children visited the Residence and then I had much else to keep me occupied, what with gazing at the cattle grazing, peering at birds, swimming in Mietoinen Bay, and retracing the footsteps of Marshall C.G.E. Mannerheim in Louhisaari’.

Anja Erämaja worked at the Saari Residence during April and May 2008.