Anu Allas and Brigitta Davidjants

Saturday 30 May
12:00
Estonian Writers' Union
Event language:
Estonian
Event translation:
English
Entry:
Free
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Brigitta Davidjants (b. 1983) is an Estonian musicologist, musician, translator, journalist and writer. The scope of Davidjants’s creative work is impressive – one need only look at last year, when she published several notable books. First, an English-language historical account of the Estonian legendary punk band J.M.K.E., entitled J.M.K.E.: To the Cold Land (Bloomsbury). Second, a short story collection An Explosion in a Chewing Gum Kiosk and Other Stories (Plahvatus nätsuputkas ja teisi jutte, Loomingu Raamatukogu), which on the one hand portrays everyday life in the Potemkin-like Soviet “paradise” of the late 20th century, and on the other uses its autobiographical texture to explore, through the character Brigitta, the broader socio-political tensions of the era from the perspective of an author of Armenian background – whether rooted in the streets of Tallinn or the highlands of Nagorno-Karabakh. Emerging from this personal, retrospective perspective are universal questions of adaptation, origin and identity. The story Into Silence (Vaikusesse) from the collection received the 2025 Friedebert Tuglas Short Story Prize.

Anu Allas (b. 1977) is an Estonian art historian and writer. In fact, the public – or at least a large part of it – still knows Allas primarily as an art historian whose particular interest lies in recent Estonian art history, and who has interpreted and advanced the Estonian art scene through her work at the Estonian Academy of Arts and KUMU. In 2016, she received the annual award of the Estonian Association of Art Historians and Curators for her research and promotion of Eastern European and Soviet-era Estonian art. Since last year’s Estonian Writers’ Union novel competition, Allas is also an award-winning writer, as her debut novel Capitulation for Beginners (Allaandmine algajatele) won third place in the competition. It is a playfully constructed autofictional work that simultaneously deals with the writing of a novel and describes the novel being written, thereby allowing the author to move between different genres. In this way, Allas creates a layered textual surface that is at once fragmentary and fluid, yet clearly reflective of the spirit of our time – the novel’s female characters are determined and capable, overshadowing the male characters.

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