Lavinia Braniște was born in Brăila, Romania, in 1983. She studied Foreign Languages at the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca and has an MA in Literary Translation from the University of Bucharest. She has published two books of short stories (Cinci minute pe zi – Five minutes a day, 2011 and Escapada – Escapade, 2014), two novels (Interior zero, 2016 and Sonia ridică mâna – Sonia is Raising the Hand, 2019) as well as several books for children. Some of her short stories have been translated into English, French, Portuguese, Croatian and Bulgarian and Interior zero was awarded the Nepotul lui Thoreau prize for the best Romanian novel of 2016.