©Daniela ULIERIU
I am an author, journalist, and passionate traveller with more than twenty-five years of experience in journalism, television, publishing, and cultural projects. My professional journey brought together literature, journalism, visual storytelling, and field research. Over the years, I have travelled to eightyfive countries, experiences that have become the raw material for my books and creative projects.
But every story has a beginning. Mine starts in a tiny hamlet tucked away among the rolling hills of Oltenia, in southern Romania. The central figure of my childhood—someone who seemed to have stepped straight out of One Hundred Years of Solitude —was my grandmother, a woman blessed with a quick mind and an iron will. A witch by profession and a cooperative farm worker by necessity, she was the envy of the village for her plants and animals, which multiplied as if touched by Petra Cotes’ magic in Macondo. Geraniums spilled from overflowing pots along the walls of the house, while dahlias, tall as little trees, covered its entire façade. Even at ninety, my grandmother would climb to the top of the hill to show me the estate the Communists had confiscated from her family. Sadly, the region lay above a coal basin and was ravaged by reckless mining, which collapsed the hills and reshaped the landscape, turning vineyards and orchards into stretches of sand.
By one of fate’s peculiar jokes, I enrolled at the Bucharest University of Economic Studies to study Finance. During lectures, I would develop itchy eczema-like rashes on my arms. I used to joke that I was allergic to accounting. At the time, I believed that finishing what you started was one of life’s essential virtues—though I later discovered it can also be a dangerous one. While still a student, I worked as a reporter for the newspapers Tineretul Liber and România Liberă, before continuing my studies at the Faculty of Journalism.
Later, I graduated from the BBC School of Television, a turning point in my life. That was where the miracle happened. I learned how to see—above all, to see light, which I now know exists in a thousand different forms. Ever since, photography and television have occupied a central place in my life. I have lived, breathed, and dreamed in frames, sequences, angles, diagonals, and the golden ratio.
I later joined the Romanian Public Television (TVR), where I produced reports for the main national news programme and several other broadcasts such as: „Cu ochii în patru”, „Acum poți afla” etc. Much of my work focused on ethnic and sexual minorities, an experience that shattered many of the frameworks I used to judge by. I also produced several documentaries I remain proud of and met people who are still among my closest friends. My relationship with words has always been cordial, but I fell irreversibly in love with images, developing a passion that has never left me.
I then moved to Prima TV, where I worked on Obiectiv, an investigative journalism series. Certain images have stayed with me ever since: crossing the Iraqi desert in the middle of a sandstorm, the colours of sunset, watching a man baking bread in an earthen oven, the flames dancing inside while the white dough trembled in his hands. Unfortunately, the programme later evolved into a medical emergency series filmed inside one of Bucharest’s busiest hospitals. Day after day, I worked side by side with ER physicians, immersed in other people’s pain. After a while, I realised I could no longer make a living from suffering, and I decided it was time to move on.
I became a freelance journalist. I directed several documentaries before collaborating with a printing house in the northern town of Câmpulung Moldovenesc. I lived on a street called Valea Seacă —”Dry Valley”—where the mud flowed more abundantly than the Nile itself. Winter seemed to last six months, and the ten-minute walk to the printing house became a daily exercise in balance, cunning, and perseverance—one that I invariably failed. Together with the brilliant art director Sorin Manda, I coordinated the publication of the Mândrescu and Feodoroff art albums.
As a freelancer, I also wrote for magazines and news agencies. Master of my own time at last, I travelled extensively throughout Southeast Asia: Ayutthaya, the first capital of the Kingdom of Siam; Myanmar, with the ancient city of Bagan—the Land of Two Thousand Temples; and Cambodia, home to the temples of Angkor, perhaps among the most breathtaking places on Earth.
I sailed along the Mekong to the Buddha caves, visited the erotic temples of Khajuraho in India, and watched half-burnt hands drifting down the waters of the Ganges. I stopped in Sarnath, where the Buddha preached his first sermon in the Deer Park, searched for traces of Mircea Eliade in Serampore, crossed Indonesia, attended funeral ceremonies involving animal sacrifices, travelled to Komodo to see the famous dragons, and rode an elephant on safari in Nepal.
Then, in 2005, my life took another decisive turn. I joined the J.F. Gacha Humanitarian Foundation, founded by Ly Dumas, one of Africa’s great ladies and among the continent’s most distinguished cultural ambassadors.
I spent many months in Bangoulap, in western Cameroon, where the whirlpool of sensations I experienced altered me profoundly. Anyone who judges Africa through Western standards is bound to be disappointed. During my time on the Bamileke Plateau, I tried to change not only the way I lived but also the way I understood the world. It felt like travelling backwards through time. I opened myself completely to everything around me, and I believe I came away infinitely richer for it.
Later, I coordinated Perles, couleurs Afrique, an art book that was, in many ways, a work of art in itself. Produced to exceptional graphic standards, it received the French Publishers’ Association Award and was named The Most Beautiful Book of 2010.
There is an Africa everyone knows—even those who have never set foot on the continent. It is the Africa of safaris, of jeeps racing past giraffes and elephants. But there is another Africa: unknown, profound, and deeply paradoxical. An Africa of voodoo, shamans, healers who tell the future by reading crabs, secret societies, initiation rites, sacred ceremonies, and ritual dances. Here, systems of power born in different centuries coexist with remarkable ease: kings and sultans, councils of elders, governments, presidents, and parliaments all function side by side in a reality that can be difficult for a European mind to grasp.
In truth, Africa changed not only my life but also the way I remembered Asia. It reshaped my earlier impressions, opening, like a third eye, new dimensions of perception and understanding.
After several turbulent years when my itinerary would span three continents, following routes such as Bali–Sulawesi–Komodo–Jakarta–Bangkok–Kathmandu–Oman–Paris–Casablanca–Yaoundé—life gradually settled down. I got married and, since 2010, I have been working on the most important project of my life: my daughter, Ly-Cristina.
Inspired by the years I had spent in Africa and Asia, the bedtime stories I made up for her were populated by princesses dressed in Ndop cloth who practised Muay Thai, talking magical pearls, phosphorescent crabs that took afternoon naps, kind-hearted hippopotamuses, deaf crocodiles, depressed snakes, grumpy panthers, and, naturally, acrobatic elephants. Brought to life through the extraordinary illustrations of Oana Ispir, Princess Ly’s adventures eventually became a beautifully illustrated children’s book.
From 2014 onwards, my travels took a new direction. I moved from African anthropology to what I like to call culinary anthropology. In 2018, together with the writer Doina Popescu and Sandu Consulea—the owner of the Zexe restaurant group and a lifelong friend—I published a book on the history of Romanian gastronomy.
Our goal was ambitious: to restore the legacy of Romania’s refined cuisine. I spent years digging through libraries and archives, reading dozens of Belle Époque publications, searching through forgotten drawers and forgotten lives, interviewing ladies who seemed to belong to another century, and reading every Romanian cookbook published before 1950 from cover to cover. Out of them all, I selected fourteen masterpieces—bestsellers born from centuries of culinary exchanges, inventions, and cultural fusion.
In 2019, the King of Bangoulap, a small town in western Cameroon, bestowed upon me the honorary title of Maveu (pronounced mah-ven ), meaning Queen Mother, the highest distinction awarded for exceptional service to the community.
Although the pandemic delayed several of my projects, in October 2020 one of the most important of them finally came to life. Ndop: Étoffes des cours royales et sociétés secrètes du Cameroun was the most ambitious—and by far the most demanding—editorial project I have ever coordinated. The book is available on Amazon and can also be found on the shelves of the prestigious French bookstore chain FNAC.
Between 2018 and 2021, Doina Popescu and I co-authored two novels. The first, Perna cu fluturi (The Pillow with Butterflies ) , was published in December 2020. “A remarkably well-balanced collaboration, The Pillow with Butterflies blends fiction and autofiction, social fresco and coming-of-age novel, tenderness and cruelty in equal measure. Written in a clear, elegant style—free of affectation yet rich in subtlety and poetry.” Cosmin Perța
Our second novel, Cvartet (Quartet), appeared in May 2021.
“Daniela Ulieriu and Doina Popescu return with Quartet, a novel in which they masterfully harness distinct, recognisable authorial voices and narrative registers, while letting the characters roam free. The novel’s brisk pace, visceral energy, stylistic clarity, and effortless shifts in tone announce the arrival of a powerful and utterly convincing work of fiction. The authors’ trained visual eye—shaped by years in television—transforms the novel into a form of docufiction, giving body through words to images that are both elusive and deeply evocative.” Roxana Dumitrache
A year later, my children’s book The Princess and the Pearl was published by Arthur Publishing House. “A globe-trotting journalist and a delightfully unconventional little African princess join hands in a story that constantly moves between worlds, exploring the hidden heart of Africa and the soul of the savannah, where time stands still and spirits mingle with humans. Princess Ly is hopeless when it comes to royal etiquette, has no ear for music, and absolutely no interest in embroidering with beads. Instead, she secretly teaches herself math and seven foreign languages, throws a devastating uppercut, and proudly considers herself a feminist avant la lettre.” Matca Literară
“The Princess and the Pearl speaks to readers of all ages. It explores worlds and cultures rarely encountered by today’s audiences. A contemporary story filled with sparkling dialogue, subtle reflections on feminism, and the timeless quarrels between parents and children.” Nona Rapotan 
Back to reality. 🙂 In January 2023, alongside Princess Ly Dumas, I had the privilege of attending the launch of Ndop at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris. A few months later, in April, the museum invited me to speak about the royal textiles and secret societies of Cameroon
In 2024, Polirom Publishing House released my novel The King of Bissap , inspired by my African experience. The novel received outstanding critical acclaim.
Luiza Negură (Convorbiri Literare) described it as: “A polyphonic novel with a richly layered structure and an organic narrative fabric woven around the theme of self-rediscovery.”
Alex Oravițan (Orizont) wrote: “The remarkable novel The King of Bissap—a hybrid work blending cultural anthropology, memoir, and (auto)fiction—places Daniela Ulieriu among the foremost novelists published in Polirom’s prestigious Ego. Proză collection… The King of Bissap confirms a fully accomplished writer with an extraordinary life experience.”
Adrian Romila (Dilema) observed: “Daniela Ulieriu’s novel resembles a vast symphonic texture in which opposites converge to create meaning across great distances. Original both in structure and in its exploration of the human condition, it is not merely the story of emotional healing but also a profound novel of the female soul—dense, labyrinthine, and richly layered.”
Bogdan Crețu (Observatorul Cultural) concluded: “The novel is well written—often exceptionally so: fast-paced, rhythmically controlled, with vivid dialogue and precise strokes. It is an immensely rewarding read, with an engaging plot set against a backdrop that gradually grows into the novel’s true centre of gravity.”
Mihaela Pascu Oglindă wrote: “…Daniela Ulieriu transforms everything into prose with dialogue that ranks among the finest in contemporary Romanian fiction. The King of Bissap is a compelling novel whose pages offer readers the possibility of crossing every border and every era. Its multiple perspectives on life, its exploration of Bamileke culture, and its attention to ritual are all part of what gives the novel a truly international appeal.”
Roxana Dumitrache wrote: “The King of Bissap is a hypnotic novel, written as though on the edge between two worlds. Iris, its protagonist, inhabits this liminality between the mystical, raw, pure, unhurried and deeply ritualised world of Cameroon—marked by symbolic violence, and not only symbolic—and that of a Bucharest middle class, with its typical neuroses, losses, and emotional relocations. Daniela Ulieriu describes with intelligence, intuition, and remarkable tenderness, a place she knows not only through detached anthropological observation, but from personal experience—a place to which, like Iris, she returns as to a great love one never heals from.”
In June 2024, together with my childhood friend and former schoolmate, Raluca Ardeleanu, I started a children’s adventure trilogy called Ly and Sofi Untangle the Threads of Time. Its first two volumes, Ly and Sofi Wander Through Time and The Three Avatars of the Scorpio, were published by Polirom Junior. The adventure series appeals to young readers through a mix of history, discovery, and time and space travel. It proves that acquiring general knowledge can be fun.
At the beginning of 2025, together with Danilo Lovisi, I had the honour of curating the inaugural exhibition of Maison Gacha, the new Cultural Centre in Paris dedicated to African art and craftsmanship.
Ly Dumas, Tisser la vie (Weaving Life) celebrates the beauty and wisdom of African textile traditions. It is an exhibition for those who are moved by the intricate geometries of Ndop, Bogolan, Kassai, Ntshak, and Baoulé textiles—and, more simply, for anyone who loves art, however clichéd that may sound. To me, African textiles embody beauty in its purest form, and I hope the images that follow will convince you of the same.
After the pandemic, the Americas took their revenge. I set off on long journeys across the continent and fell hopelessly in love with it. With the endless beaches and the sense of happiness that seems to float in the air in Rio de Janeiro, Valparaíso, and Miraflores in Lima. With the breathtaking Iguazú Falls, which I wandered through for days, following the winding trails that weave among hundreds of cascading waterfalls. And with elegant Buenos Aires, a city where I have the strange feeling I must have lived before, perhaps sometime in the 1920s. Then came Peru—a country that quickly rose to the very top of my list of favorite places and one I sincerely hope to return to. And, of course, there was New York, a city where I would love to spend at least a year of my life.
http://stiri.tvr.ro/brilliant–daniela-ulieriu–expert-in-cultura-africana—–intalnirea-cu-prin–esa-ly-dumas-mi-a-schimbat-via–a—_920281.html#view
https://bookhub.ro/o-poveste-sub-semnul-echilibrulu
Prințesa și perla. O poveste africană” de Daniela Ulieriu, în dialog cu Oana Purice – YouTube
Atelier LiterNet / Anca-Maria Pănoiu, pe marginea unui volum de Daniela Ulieriu, Doina Popescu: Cvartet. Redactarea unui roman jam-session, sau despre cum m-am ales cu un parfum în miez de noapte, pe neîncercatehttps://filme-carti.ro/carti/instrainarea-simturilor-intr-un-roman-scris-la-patru-maini-perna-cu-fluturi-de-doina-popescu-si-daniela-ulieriu-94240/
Când cvartetul n-are nimic de-a face cu muzica de cameră | BookHUBhttps://www.delicateseliterare.ro/perna-cu-fluturi-de-doina-popescu-daniela-ulieriu-editura-paralela-45-recenzie/
CARTE “Cvartet” de Daniela Ulieriu, Doina Popescu > George Hari Popescu, ministrul Cyberculturii (cyberculture.ro)
https://www.facebook.com/liviu.drugus/posts/10225278927138943
https://www.facebook.com/liviu.drugus/posts/10225286119798755
https://bookhub.ro/cand-ati-simtit-ultima-oara-fluturi-in-stomac-perna-cu-fluturi-de-doina-popescu-daniela-ulieriu/
https://ciobanuldeazi.home.blog/2021/04/29/perna-cu-fluturi-de-doina-popescu-si-daniela-ulieriu-romanul-fluid-a-doua-destine-zbuciumate/
https://elenascrie.blogspot.com/2021/03/recenzie-literara-perna-cu-fluturi-de.html
https://www.delicateseliterare.ro/trei-secole-de-gastronomie-romaneasca-de-daniela-ulieriu-doina-popescu-editura-paralela-45/
https://literaturapetocuri.ro/trei-secole-de-gastronomie-romaneasca-de-la-muhalebiu-si-schembea-la-volovan-si-galantina-recenzie.html
http://www.revista-astra.ro/literatura/files/2019/11/11-Steluta-Pestrea-Suciu-Lecturi-astrale.pdf
https://dilemaveche.ro/autor/daniela-ulieriu
https://dilemaveche.ro/sectiune/tema-saptamanii/articol/buna-menajera-1871-primul-best-seller-culinar-romanesc
https://dilemaveche.ro/sectiune/tema-saptamanii/articol/spune-mi-ce-brinza-maninci-ca-sa-ti-spun-cine-esti
https://www.igloo.ro/ah-sarmalele/
Și ca să revin la titlul blogului meu, pregătesc de ceva timp o carte despre Asia. Cine stie când o voi termina…