Paula Erizanu (b. 1992) is a writer and journalist from Chisinau, Moldova. She studied History with Literature and History of Art at the New College of the Humanities in London and Journalism at City University London. She has written for the BBC, The Guardian, London Review of Books, Financial Times, Kyiv Independent etc. She comments on Moldovan and Romanian news for the BBC, LBC, Monocle etc. She was shortlisted for the Culture Journalist of the Year award in 2019 in the UK's Words by Women competition. Her first book, This Is My First Revolution. Steal It (Cartier, 2011) was a creative non fiction account of the 2009 pro-democracy protests in Moldova, which won the Most Beautiful Book Production prize in Leipzig, offered by UNESCO Germany. Erizanu then published a volume of poetry, Take Care (Charmides, 2015) and co-edited, in collaboration with Alina Purcaru, the pioneering three-part anthology A Century of Romanian Poetry Written by Women (Cartier, 2019-2021). For her feminist historical novel The Woods Are Burning (Cartier, 2021), Paula Erizanu received the Young Writer of the Year 2022 award at the Young Writers Gala in Bucharest, Romania. At the border between fiction and nonfiction, her latest book, Both Heaven and Hell Are Here. Moldova: A Century of Lived History (Cartier, 2025) is a polyphonic, oral history account of Moldova.
