Vânia Maia began her career in local radio but truly found her voice in print journalism. Her feature stories have earned more than a dozen distinctions, including the Lorenzo Natali Prize, and she was nominated for the True Story Award 2025. Maia was selected for the European Collaborative Journalism Programme and has received grants from both the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and Journalismfund Europe. Her reporting has taken her from the Chernobyl nuclear plant to refugee camps in Uganda and cyclone-ravaged regions of Mozambique. Now a freelancer, university lecturer, and PhD candidate, she is working on her first non-fiction book.