27 Finnish dramatists and playwrights

Kaarlo Bergbom was a Finnish theatre director. He was the founder of the Finnish National Theatre, the first Finnish language theatre company. Though he wrote very little as a playwright, he was responsible for introducing a number of important Finnish dramatists, particularly Minna Canth, and Finnish translations of William Shakespeare and other foreign writers. Bergbom also founded the magazine Kirjallinen Kuukausilehti.

Minna Canth was a Finnish writer and social activist. Canth began to write while managing her family draper's shop and living as a widow raising seven children. Her work addresses issues of women's rights, particularly in the context of a prevailing culture she considered antithetical to permitting expression and realization of women's aspirations. Her play The Pastor's Family is her best known. In her time, she became a controversial figure, due to the asynchrony between her ideas and those of her time, and in part due to her strong advocacy for her point of view.

Paavo Juhani Haavikko was a Finnish poet, playwright, essayist and publisher, considered one of the country's most outstanding writers. He published more than 70 works, and his poems have been translated to 12 languages.

Robert Neil Hardwick is a British-born Finnish theatre and TV director and writer. He was raised in Teversal, near Nottingham. His father was a teacher, and Neil Hardwick has described himself as "a second generation non-miner".

Anna-Leena Härkönen is a Finnish writer and actress.

Kari Hotakainen is a Finnish writer. Hotakainen started his writing career as a reporter in Pori. In 1986, he moved to Helsinki. He became a full-time writer in 1996. He has two children with his wife, sound technician Tarja Laaksonen, whom he married in 1983. He has also worked as a copywriter and as a columnist for the Helsingin Sanomat.

Veikko Huovinen was a Finnish novelist and forester. As a novelist, his writing was known for its realism, pacifism, sharp intellect, and peculiar humor. He wrote 37 books. One of his books, the 1980 novel Dog Nail Clipper was adapted into a critically well-received 2004 film of the same name.

Juha Hurme is a Finnish director, playwright and writer and recipient of the Eino Leino Prize in 2006. In 2017 Hurme was awarded the Finlandia Prize, for his novel Niemi and has a degree in biology.

Pasi (Basilius) Jääskeläinen was a Finnish actor, singer, playwright and kantele player. He was one of the first recorded Cuplé singers in Finland. In addition he was one of the first artists to produce recordings in Finland, as previously they had been made in places like Saint Petersburg. Jääskeläinen recorded dozens of songs from 1904 until 1911.

Kustaa Artturi Järviluoma was a Finnish journalist, screenwriter and author. Until 1902, he went by the name Jernström. He is best known for his play Pohjalaisia, which later formed the basis for a popular opera by Leevi Madetoja.

Juha Petteri Jokela is Finnish playwright and scriptwriter, best known for his Mobile Horror play and TV series.

Katja Maaria Kettu is a Finnish contemporary writer and film producer. She debuted in 2005 with the novel Surujenkerääjä. The book was nominated for the Helsingin-Sanomat literature prize as best debut novel. Her breakthrough as writer succeeded with The Midwife (Kätilö). In the book Kettu describes the love between a Finnish midwife and a German officer during the Second World War. She shows in brutal scenes of birth, abortion and murder how people are able to suffer for love. The story is inspired by the life of Kettu's grandparents.

Aleksis Kivi, born Alexis Stenvall, was a Finnish author who wrote the first significant novel in the Finnish language, Seitsemän veljestä in 1870. He is also known for his 1864 play Heath Cobblers. Although Kivi was among the very earliest authors of prose and lyrics in Finnish, he is still considered one of the greatest.

Kirsi Marjatta Kunnas is a Finnish poet, children's literature author and translator into Finnish. Her extensive oeuvre consists of poems, fairy tale books, drama, translations and non-fiction. Her books have been translated into Swedish, English, German, French, Hungarian, Estonian and Polish. She has received several awards in Finland for her life's work.

Heikki Luoma is a Finnish writer, playwright and screenwriter.

Eeva-Liisa Manner was a Finnish poet, playwright and translator.

Eppu Nuotio is a Finnish actress, author, screenwriter, playwright and columnist.

Sofi Oksanen is a Finnish writer and playwright. Oksanen has published five novels, of which Purge has gained the widest recognition. She has received several international and domestic awards for her literary work. Her work has been translated into more than 40 languages and sold more than two million copies.

Lasse Erik Pöysti was a Finnish actor, director, theatre manager and writer. He was born in Sortavala.

Juha Ensio Ruusuvuori is a Finnish freelance writer. He was born in Oulu, and graduated to Master of Arts from the university of Tampere in 1987. He has worked as photographer in the news paper Kaleva, editor in TV-news of Yleisradio and in radio news and as publication editor in Banana Press Oy.

Arvo Jaakko Henrikki Salo was a Finnish writer, journalist and politician. He served as an MP from 1966 to 1970 and from 1979 to 1983 and was Minister of Education and Culture from 1982 to 1983 in Kalevi Sorsa's third cabinet.

Tomi Kristian Smeds is a Finnish playwright and theatre director. Kristian Smeds has worked in Finland, Estonia, Belgium and Lithuania.

Antti Elias Tuuri is a Finnish writer, known for his works dealing with Southern Ostrobothnia.

Jukka Pellervo Tyrkkö was a Finnish war writer.

Rauha S. Virtanen was a Finnish author who wrote youth literature as well as plays. Virtanen received numerous literary awards, including the Topelius Prize in 1971, the State Prize for Youth Literature in 1971, and the Tirlittan Prize of the Finnish Writers' Union in 2003.

Josef Julius Wecksell was a Finnish poet and playwright.

Agnes Elvira Maria Willman was a Finnish playwright, journalist and a revolutionary socialist who was one of the most prominent women of the early Finnish labour movement. Willman is also considered as the first female working-class writer in Finland, despite coming from a bourgeois background. After the 1918 Finnish Civil War Willman and her husband, Voitto Eloranta fled to the Soviet Russia. They were both later accused of being involved with the Kuusinen Club Incident, a murder of eight Finnish communists. Eloranta was executed in 1922 and Willman in 1925.