I am a writer. In Finnish it is hard to find an equivalent for this wonderfully concise term, which covers all the things I do, things that really require separate terms in Finnish. Author, yes, first and foremost, because I try to leave as much time as possible free for that work. I have produced anthologies of poetry, non-fiction, plays, one collection of short stories, and right now I'm working on a novel. I was a full-time journalist once, working with pictures, sounds, and words.

As part of my studies in cultural anthropology, I conducted fieldwork in the Algerian Sahara, thousands of miles from Helsinki, rode trains and buses all day for a week and found a place to stay in a village in an oasis, first on the Arab side and then on the Berber side - to compare and contrast the effects of living on the two sides of the village was actually the purpose of my visit.