This year's festival gave attendees the chance to meet and engage in meaningful discussions with a total of 30 different writers and other cultural figures.

Recently named Writer of the Year, Urmas Vadi said that Estonian literature is doing well, and that interest in reading hasn't gone anywhere.

"We're doing well in literature, because while everyone else is facing all kinds of cuts, we don't have to cut our texts," Vadi said.

"Looking at last year's prose for example too, several very good books were published in Estonia at the end of last year, and all sorts of cool things are being translated," he continued. "I understand that print runs seem to be getting smaller, and everyone's saying they don't read, but I don't know – I sure feel like people are reading."

Things are going well for children's lit too, with plenty of writers and little readers to go around.

"In the last year especially, I've met quite a lot of children in various schools, kindergartens and libraries, for example, and I actually must say it's been a very positive surprise that children are very interested and reading," acknowledged children's author Kadri Lepp.

Despite the vitality of Estonian literature, what concerns writers are signs of declining interest in reading.

"How can we get even more children to crack open a book?" Lepp asked. "How can we tempt them away from other distractions and get them to read more, and through reading develop a greater ability to go in-depth, which to me seems to be fading in any case right now."

"We've noticed over the last maybe even two decades that there are quite a lot of people who want to write – if only there were as many who read," said translator and writer Indrek Koff. "It seems like people are reading less and less, and books aren't really being bought, and that makes managing things in literature a bit more challenging."

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