Alina Dumitrescu was born in Moinești in what was then the Socialist Republic of Romania, and emigrated to Montréal in 1988, shortly before the fall of the Ceaușescu regime. Her schooling was not recognized in her adoptive country, and she undertook CEGEP and university studies in Québec. She started writing again in the late 1990s, in French, publishing poetry and short fiction. Le cimetière des abeilles, her first novel, was published by Triptyque in 2016, and was a finalist at the Festival du premier roman de Chambéry and won the Blue Metropolis/Conseil des arts de Montréal Diversity Prize.