Kristiina Ehin

Kristiina Ehin is one of Estonia's leading poets and is known throughout Europe for her poetry and short stories. She has an MA in Comparative and Estonian Folklore from the University of Tartu, and folklore plays a significant role in her work. In her native Estonian she has to date published six volumes of poetry, three books of short stories and a retelling of South-Estonian fairy tales. She has also written two theatrical productions as well as poetic, imaginative radio broadcasts, one of...See more

Kristiina Ehin is one of Estonia's leading poets and is known throughout Europe for her poetry and short stories. She has an MA in Comparative and Estonian Folklore from the University of Tartu, and folklore plays a significant role in her work. In her native Estonian she has to date published six volumes of poetry, three books of short stories and a retelling of South-Estonian fairy tales. She has also written two theatrical productions as well as poetic, imaginative radio broadcasts, one of which has also been released as a CD. She has won Estonia's most prestigious poetry prize for Kaitseala (Huma, 2005), a book of poems and journal entries written during a year spent as a nature reserve warden on an otherwise uninhabited island off Estonia's north coast. In English translation, Kristiina has published six books of poetry, including 1001 WINTERS (The Bitter Oleander Press, 2013) and IN A SINGLE BREATH (Cross- Cultural Communications, 2013), and three of prose. The Drums of Silence (Oleander, 2007) was awarded the British Poetry Society Popescu Prize for European Poetry in Translation, and The Scent of Your Shadow (Arc, 2010) is a British Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation. Her plays and broadcasts have also been translated into English and her work, poetry and prose, appears regularly in leading English language literary magazines and anthologies in the US, UK, and Ireland. In addition to English, her work has been translated into 19 languages. She is a highly acclaimed performer of her poetry, prose and drama and travels extensively around Estonia and abroad to perform her work, sometimes accompanied by musicians. Kristiina lives in Estonia with her husband, the musician Silver Sepp, and her son. Ilmar Lehtpere is Kristiina Ehin's English language translator. He has translated nearly all of her work--poetry, prose and drama--most of which has appeared in Kristiina's nine books in his translation, as well as in numerous literary magazines. Kristiina and he have won two prestigious prizes together for poetry in translation. Their collaboration is ongoing. Ilmar lives in Estonia with his wife, the poet Sadie Murphy. See less