The author

Korinna Leányvári

I have loved books for as long as I can remember. As a child, I read voraciously, losing myself in the stories others had written. Before long, I discovered that I wanted to put my own stories on paper, too.

I started writing for school newspapers when I was young. Later, during my high school years, I wrote more and more, but mostly for myself. My short stories ended up tucked away in a drawer. I simply loved writing, and it never occurred to me that one day other people might read my work.

Then my mother did something that would change my life. Without telling me, she entered some of my writing in a literary competition. To my complete astonishment, I won.

The prize was another surprise: a chance to attend a journalism course free of charge. My stories began appearing in newspapers, and local papers interviewed me. Little by little, a new world opened up to me.

While I was still in school, I also became involved with our local city radio station, working there voluntarily in my spare time. I did it not for money, but because I loved a world where I could tell stories, meet people, and share ideas.

And all the while, I kept writing about people, emotions, unexpected moments, and the strange turns life can take.

Those stories eventually became Bizarrságok, my first collection of short stories, published by a publishing house in Budapest, Hungary. I was just 23 when I held my own printed book in my hands for the first time.

Over the years, life took me in new directions. I moved to the United States, raised my three sons, worked, and adapted to a completely different pace of life. There was less time to write. Stories and ideas continued to grow in my mind, but many of them never quite made it onto the page.

Now, as my children have grown older, I finally have more time to return to something that has always been a part of me. I can give those thoughts and stories the attention they have been waiting for.