Lea Ypi

Her book Free: Coming of Age at the End of History was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction, and the Costa Prize for Biography. It won the Ondaatje Prize the Slightly Foxed First Biography Prize, and was The Sunday Times' memoir of the year and a book of the year for The Guardian, The New Yorker, The Financial Times, the TLS, The Spectator, New Statesman, and the Daily Mail. In 2022, BBC Radio 4 serialised the book in their Book of the Week series.

Ypi earned her laurea in philosophy at the Sapienza University of Rome in 2002 and her laurea in Literature and Journalism from the same institution in 2004. She received her Master of Research from the European University Institute in 2005 and her PhD from the European University Institute in 2008.

Ypi was born in Tirana, the eldest child of Xhaferr Ypi and Vjollca Veli who were relatively regular citizens under communist rule, but who later became involved in Albanian democratic politics in Ypi's late childhood prior to the Albanian civil war in 1997. She grew up in both communist and post-communist Albania, the experience of this transition being the main topic of her book 'Free: Coming of Age at the End of History' (2021). Though her family were compelled to be atheist under communist rule, her family was historically Muslim. Ypi herself says she is now agnostic. One of her paternal great-grandfathers, Xhafer Ypi, was briefly Prime Minister of Albania in the 1920s, and also very briefly headed the Albanian government following the Italian occupation.

Lea Ypi (born 8 September 1979) is an Albanian author and academic. She is a professor of political theory at the London School of Economics. She is a member of the jury of the Deutscher Memorial Prize.