Mirja Hovila first came to Riga from Finland in 1990, and it more or less changed her life. Since then she has studied Baltic philology, has become an authorized translator from Latvian into Finnish, and has visited Latvia more than a hundred times.

Mirja has translated books and documents from Swedish, Norwegian, English, and Italian into Finnish as well, and interprets to and from Italian and Latvian. She is the co-author of the first textbook of Latvian for Finns and a Latvian–Finnish phrasebook.

As Finnish publishers are often reluctant to publish Latvian literature,  in 2016 Mirja started a tiny publishing house of her own, PAPERIPORO, which has so far published in Finland two children’s books of the beloved writer Juris Zvirgzdiņš, The First Christmas Tree and The Roar of Lion. She has also translated a selection of poems by Kārlis Vērdiņš and Rainis, as well as Rainis’s letters to Aspazija and some Latvian songs.