Lilli Luuk
Estonia
Lilli Luuk (b. 1976) is an Estonian writer and an art historian by education. She worked as a teacher and lecturer before becoming a full-time writer in 2021, and is a member of the Estonian Writers’ Union. Her debut won the 2018 Friedebert Tuglas Award for Short Stories, and her stories have been published in English, German, Hungarian, Latvian and Spanish.
Her second novel, Ööema (Night Mother), nominated for the 2026 European Union Prize for Literature, won the Estonian State Annual Cultural Award and the A. H. Tammsaare Literary Award. Set in the vast Estonian marshland, it follows a young artist who, lost in the bog with her mother and aunt, uncovers secrets the women of her family have kept for half a century.