Growing up in Soviet Moldova – a land where propaganda dominated the airwaves – Stela escaped into the world of literature from an early age. Books were the most exciting form of entertainment in her life and they saw her through the cold, candlelit nights when the country's authorities introduced mandatory power cuts.

Stela moved to London at the age of 18. With a BA in Media Studies from the University of Westminster, she embarked on a brief journalistic career, training with the BBC and running a community magazine, before she turned her attention to literature. Her fiction explores issues of identity, gender roles, the unity and inter-connectedness of nature, and the conflict of religion – organised religion – vs spirituality.