Uusma was born and raised in
Lidingö,
Stockholm County. In 1999, she wrote and illustrated a children's book about the American astronaut
Michael Collins titled
The Man Who Went to the Far Side of the Moon: The Story of Apollo 11 Astronaut Michael Collins. In the mid-1990s she became interested in
S. A. Andrée's Arctic Balloon Expedition of 1897 and began researching the fate of the expedition members. This research resulted in the book
The Expedition for which she was awarded the
August Prize for non-fiction in 2013. In 2025, ''The Expedition's
freestanding continuation, Kvitøya'', also received the August Prize for non-fiction After working as an illustrator for several years, Uusma studied medicine and graduated as a physician from
Karolinska Institutet in 2012. She works as a medical doctor at
Karolinska University Hospital in
Stockholm. == Personal life ==