Ľudmila Riznerová was born in Horné Bzince on 26 April 1872, the daughter of the Lutheran teacher Karol Rudolf Rizner. Her uncle Ľudovít Rizner, the great Slovak bibliographer, and the local pastor and writer Ján Pravoslav Leška encouraged her; she was publishing by 1887 and took her pen-name from the mountain over the roofs — Podjavorinská, the one from under Javorina. She never married and lived most of her life on the small sums Slovak magazines paid for her work. The village she wrote about lived partly on the road: Bzince pedlars carried embroidery as far as Romania and Italy and sold across Moravia and Bohemia, in Prague and the spa towns, and it was that trade rather than the fields that slowly raised the standard of living here.Ľudmila Riznerová sa narodila v Horných Bzinciach 26. apríla 1872 ako dcéra evanjelického učiteľa Karola Rudolfa Riznera. Podporovali ju strýko Ľudovít Rizner, veľký slovenský bibliograf, a miestny farár a spisovateľ Ján Pravoslav Leška; publikovala už od roku 1887 a spisovateľské meno si vzala od vrchu nad strechami — Podjavorinská, tá spod Javoriny. Nikdy sa nevydala a väčšinu života žila zo skromných honorárov, ktoré platili slovenské časopisy. Dedina, o ktorej písala, žila sčasti na cestách: bzinskí podomoví obchodníci nosili výšivky až do Rumunska a Talianska a predávali po Morave a v Čechách, v Prahe aj v kúpeľných mestách — a práve tento obchod, nie polia, tu pomaly dvíhal životnú úroveň.
