Elina Polvi and Satu Leppälä win 2026 Pirkanmaa writing prizes, each awarded €1,000
Tampere writers Elina Polvi and Satu Leppälä each won €1,000 in the 2026 Pirkanmaa writing competition run by Tampere City Library; four prose and five poetry entries received honorable mentions.
Winners of the 2026 Pirkanmaa writing competition are announced. City of Tampere reports that Tampere City Library’s 75th annual contest awarded €1,000 prizes to Tampere writers Elina Polvi (prose) and Satu Leppälä (poetry), with four prose and five poetry honorable mentions also named.
Organisers received 408 entries this year — 222 prose and 186 poetry — and the jury of Janica Brander, Jonimatti Joutsijärvi, Silvia Hosseini and Matti Huhta said it was unanimous in selecting the winners. The panel praised Polvi’s winning short story as cohesive and memorable, able to carry multiple relationships and moods through a single, tightly drawn day, and it highlighted Leppälä’s poetry series for its strong voice and inventive play with registers.
Judges noted a crowded middle tier among submissions and said they missed bolder extremes: prose entries often lacked tension, revelations and fully realised stories, while poetry would benefit from greater daring and patience in refinement. Recurring themes included mental health and caregiving, spirituality, nature scenes where animals and landscape assert themselves, and local Tampere motifs such as the tram, Laukontori seagulls, the red-brick cityscape and traces of the civil war. Full results and the jury’s justifications are available on the Pirkanmaa writing competition website.
Catch the full story over at City of Tampere
