Lilli Luuk

Lilli Luuk (real name Kristina Tamm, born Kristina Valdru, 1976) is an artist, art historian and writer.

She was born in Paide in the family of a sports coach and completed Paide Gymnasium in 1994. Luuk studied history at the University of Tartu and acquired a master’s degree in art history there in 2010. Lilli Luuk has worked at Tartu Higher Art School Pallas as a lecturer in philosophy and art history. She has displayed her artwork at exhibitions. From 2021, she has been a freelance writer. Her cousin is writer Erkki Luuk.

Lilli Luuk made her debut in the journal Looming in 2017 and received the Friedebert Tuglas Short Story Award for the short story Auk (‘Hole’). In 2020, she received the same prize for the short story Kolhoosi miss (‘Collective Farm Miss’). The action of her stories is often set in the 1980s and 1990s, the time of a social breakthrough in Estonia. The depiction of life in those times mostly seems sad and insecure. Luuk’s short story collection Kolhoosi miss (2022) also includes the short story Mäed (‘Hills’), for which Luuk won the annual award of the journal Looming.

Luuk’s first novel, Minu venna keha (‘My Brother’s Body’, 2022), deals with the attempts of a 19-year-old female protagonist to find freedom, truth, and her own path while travelling in 1944 through Estonia – a devastated country reoccupied by Russians – in a situation where only women are left in the family. The novel earned Luuk the Writer of the Year award, as well as third place in the Hea Lugu publishing house’s historical novel competition.

Luuk’s second novel, Ööema (‘Mother of Night’, 2024), also continues to deal with the post-World War II situation in Estonia and the traumas it contains; its protagonists are again women who prefer internal rather than mutual communication. Both novels involve jumps between several different time periods. Raili Marling has noted that Lilli Luuk’s works are similar to Ene Mihkelson‘s work, but are somewhat more reader-friendly than the latter. For Ööema, Luuk was awarded the Tammsaare Literary Award (2025) and the Arved Viirlaid Literary Prize (2026).

Lilli Luuk was among the writers who received the writer’s salary in 2023–2025.

L. P. (Translated by I. A.)

Books in Estonian

Novels
Minu venna keha. Tallinn: Hea Lugu, 2022. 182 lk.
Ööema. Äksi: Saadjärve kunstikeskus, 2024, 228 lk.

Short stories
Kolhoosi miss. Äksi: Saadjärve kunstikeskus, 2022. 166 lk.