Katri Lipson was born in Helsinki in 1965. After secondary school, she studied medicine in Sweden and graduated from the Medical School of Uppsala University in 1993. Since then, she has been working as a doctor in Sweden, Africa and Finland. She has always written, including fairytales, short stories, poems, plays and novels.
Her debut novel, Cosmonaut (Kosmonautti), was nominated for the respected Finlandia Prize in 2008 and won the Helsingin Sanomat Debut Book of the Year Award in 2008. Her second EUPL-winning novel, The Ice-Cream Man (Jäätelökauppias), was published in 2012. Her third novel Detroit (2016) was a NHL tragedy, and her latest novel The Saddest Play (Kaikkein haikein leikki, 2019) was a mysterious roll play in a spa town. She lives with her family in Vantaa, Finland.