{"id":1212,"date":"2024-04-03T23:40:58","date_gmt":"2024-04-03T20:40:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/lilliluuk\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T00:46:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T21:46:07","slug":"lilliluuk","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/l\/lilliluuk\/","title":{"rendered":"Lilli Luuk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lilli Luuk (real name Kristina Tamm, born Kristina Valdru, 1976) is an artist, art historian and writer.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s 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 <\/span><\/span><\/span>Erkki Luuk<\/a><\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lilli Luuk made her debut in the journal Looming<\/em> in 2017 and received the <\/span><\/span><\/span>Friedebert Tuglas<\/a><\/span><\/span> Short Story Award for the short story Auk<\/em> (\u2018Hole\u2019). In 2020, she received the same prize for the short story Kolhoosi miss<\/em> (\u2018Collective Farm Miss\u2019). 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.<\/span><\/span><\/span> Luuk\u2019s short story collection Kolhoosi miss<\/em> (2022) also includes the short story M\u00e4ed<\/em> (\u2018Hills\u2019), for which Luuk won the annual award of the journal Looming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luuk\u2019s first novel, Minu venna keha<\/em> (\u2018My Brother\u2019s Body\u2019, 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 \u2013 a devastated country reoccupied by Russians \u2013 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\u2019s historical novel competition.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luuk\u2019s second novel, \u00d6\u00f6ema<\/em> (\u2018Mother of Night\u2019, 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\u2019s works are similar to Ene Mihkelson<\/a>\u2018s work, but are somewhat more reader-friendly than the latter. For \u00d6\u00f6ema<\/em>, Luuk was awarded the Tammsaare<\/a> Literary Award (2025) and the Arved Viirlaid<\/a> Literary Prize (2026).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lilli Luuk was among the writers who received the writer\u2019s salary in 2023\u20132025.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

L. P. (Translated by I. A.)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


Books in Estonian<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Novels<\/em><\/strong>
Minu venna keha<\/strong>. Tallinn: Hea Lugu, 2022. 182 lk.<\/span><\/span><\/span>
\u00d6\u00f6ema<\/strong>. \u00c4ksi: Saadj\u00e4rve kunstikeskus, 2024, 228 lk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Short stories<\/em><\/strong>
Kolhoosi miss<\/strong>. \u00c4ksi: Saadj\u00e4rve kunstikeskus, 2022. 166 lk.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"parent":631,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1212","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1212"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10479,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1212\/revisions\/10479"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/ewod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}