Poet Maira Asare was born in Sigulda in 1960. She has studied medicine at the Riga Medical Institute (1978-1981) and journalism at the State University of Latvia (1988-1990). Maira Asare started her career as a personal assistant at the law firm Medvecka, Ramiņa& Arājs (1992-1999) and later worked at the Ventspils Culture Centre (2008-2009) and the Ventspils City Library (since 2010). Maira Asare has served a term in prison (2008-2009) for drug offences and her first work of prose, "A Female Joint", has been inspired by this experience. The book offers an insight into the everyday life of women behind bars; it tells the story of people who, for one reason or another, have fallen through the gaps of society. In cooperation with the poet and translator Sergei Moreino, Asare wrote "The Cold Flame on Hansa", a book of poems in a bilingual Latvian-Russian edition. Maira Asare has received the Days of Poetry Award for her book of poems "He Who Fools Around With a Cuckoo" (1995). She also translates poetry and prose from Russian into Latvian. Among other authors, she has translated works by Sergei Moreino, Sergei Timofejev, Alexei Ivlev and Sasha Sokolov.