Born Minni Neumann, Nurme graduated from the girls' school in
Viljandi in 1936. During
World War II she lived behind Soviet lines; after the war she moved to Tallinn and worked as a freelance writer. Her first prose work was the 1939 novel
Kentaurid (
The Centaurs). Two years later came the novel
Ratastool (
The Wheelchair). She turned more and more to poetry during the war, and in 1945 published her first poetry collection,
Sünnimuld (
Mother Earth). Between her second and third collections came a ten-year hiatus, largely due to the harassment of Stalinist authorities. Nurme was also active as a translator, from
Finnish and
English. Nurme's elder sister was the poet
Salme Ekbaum. When she was married to Jan Raudsepp from 1936 until 1941 she was known as Minni Raudsepp. In 1941 she married the writer
Aadu Hint. They divorced in 1958 and had five children, three sons and two daughters. The divorce was a scandal in Estonia. ==Works==