Jaakko Syrjä (7 March 1926 – 22 May 2022) was a Finnish writer. He served as the president of the

Union of Finnish Writers The Union of Finnish Writers ( fi, Suomen Kirjailijaliitto r.y.) is an ideological and professional organization representing fiction authors writing in Finnish. The organization was founded in 1897 and now has around 770 members. It is led by an el ...

from 1975 to 1980.

Biography

Syrjä was born in

Pälkäne Pälkäne () is a municipality of Finland. It is part of the Pirkanmaa region. The municipality has a population of () and covers an area of of which . The population density is . Onkkaala is the administrative center of the municipality. Tamper ...

, the son of Martta née Niemiö and Juho Nestori Syrjä, who were both cattle traders and

farmer A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials. The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising field crops, orchards, vineyards, poultry, or other livestock. A farmer m ...

s. At the age of seven, he and his family moved from Hirsilä to Korkeakoski. Syrjä then moved to

Tampere Tampere ( , , ; sv, Tammerfors, ) is a city in the Pirkanmaa region, located in the western part of Finland. Tampere is the most populous inland city in the Nordic countries. It has a population of 244,029; the urban area has a population o ...

, where he worked for the railroad equipment and steam locomotive manufacturing company Lokomo. In 1953 his story "There came the Bear" win Best Short Story in the Pirkanmaa Writing Competition. Jaakko-Syrja-Kirsi-Kunnas-1965

He later worked as an editor for

Gummerus Gummerus Oy is a Finnish media group that was founded in Jyväskylä in 1872 by Kaarle Jaakko Gummerus. In 1985, it moved its headquarters from Jyväskylä to Helsinki. In 2008, it had an annual turnover of EUR 26,9 million. Annually, ...

and WSOY. Syrjä was a member of the

from 1970 to 1975, and president from 1975 to 1980. He worked with

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others asp ...

Kalle Päätalo Kaarlo (Kalle) Alvar Päätalo (11 November 1919 – 20 November 2000) was a Finnish novelist, the most popular Finnish writer in the 20th century. His ''Iijoki'' series, comprising 26 novels, is one of the longest autobiographical works ever ...

adapting works for publication. Syrjä was a member of the Väinö Linna Society. Syrjä won the City of Tampere Literature Prize three times from 1956 to 1988. He also was a winner of the

Thanks for the Book Award The Thanks for the Book Award, (''Kiitos kirjasta -mitali'' in Finnish and ''Tack för boken-medaljen'' in Swedish), is a Finnish literary prize that has been presented since 1966 by the Organization of the Booksellers’ Association of Finland (Kir ...

in 1966. Syrjä was nominated for the

Finlandia Prize The Finlandia Prize ( fi, Finlandia-palkinto; sv, Finlandiaprisen) is a set of Finnish literary prizes awarded by the Finnish Book Foundation to "celebrate reading and highlight new Finnish first-rate literature." Considered the most prestigious ...

in 1988. He was a winner of the Väinö Linna Prize in 2005. In 2016, Syrjä was awarded the Pirkanmaa Art Prize by the Pirkanmaa Arts Council. Syrjä died of

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quickly ...

in May 2022, aged 96, at a care home in

Ylöjärvi Ylöjärvi () is a town and a municipality in the Pirkanmaa region, northwest of Tampere and north of the capital city Helsinki in Finland. The town has a population of () and covers an area of of which is water. The population density is . ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Syrjä, Jaakko 1926 births 2022 deaths People from Pälkäne Deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic in Finland 20th-century Finnish male writers Thanks for the Book Award winners