who?

Jenna Viro is a writer for whom the boundaries of art forms are questions to be explored, categorization a means to create chimeras, and confusion a necessary movement for stirring thought.

In Viro’s debut work Tuhkimoleikkaus (Cinderella Surgery, 2023), Charles Gounod’s opera Faust takes on a new form, as a surgeon cuts Magdalena and the Cinderella tale into the opera’s libretto. The work explores themes such as cosmetic surgery, performativity, and gender roles. The book was a nominee for the Helsingin Sanomat Prize for debut fiction and received an honorary mention for its originality and artistic ambition.

Viro’s artistic craft is defined by a sustained interest in transformation; of texts, genres, bodies, and artistic media. Rather than treating literature as a fixed form, she approaches writing as a site where different traditions and disciplines collide. Her works often combine literary fiction, dramatic writing, body horror, and performance, creating hybrid forms that resist conventional categorization.

She is currently working on her second novel lammas (the lamb). her first libretto, the request, will premiere as an opera at the Finnish National Opera and Ballet in August 2026. She is also currently studying literary theory and aesthetics in the Master’s Programme in Art Studies at the University of Helsinki.