Netherlands

EVERY YEAR, LITRO PUBLISHES INTERNATIONAL EDITIONS FOCUSING ON DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE GLOBE

For this World Series edition, we turn our pages to the Netherlands with an edition titled Double Dutch, partnering with the Dutch Embassy Litro hosted a celebratory festival under the same name, the main festival stage was in Hyde Park’s Serpentine Bar & Kitchen with evening events taking place at the Kensington Gore Hotel.

  • Nyk de Vries

    Nyk de Vries

    Nyk de Vries was born in Friesland, a province in the northern part of the Netherlands. He is a writer and a musician. Since 2000 he has written two novels and a collection of flash fiction, Motorman & 39 andere prozagedichten (Motorman & 39 other prose poems). He is currently working on a new collection and an album, the CD version of his Motorman collection. Nyk de Vries lives and works in Amsterdam.

  • Ramsey Nasr

    Ramsey Nasr

    Ramsey Nasr was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. In addition to being a prize-winning author of poetry, essays, dramas, he is also a gifted film and theatre actor.In 2009, Ramsey Nasr was voted Poet Laureate of the Netherlands. In 2000, he was the winner of the Hugues C. Pernath Prize. In 2006 Ramsey Nasr was awarded the honorary Journalist for Peace prize by the Humanistisch Vredesberaad (Dutch Humanistic Peace Council).

  • Chika Unigwe

    Chika Unigwe

    CHIKA UNIGWE IS A NIGERIAN-BORN AUTHOR WHO WRITES IN ENGLISH AND DUTCH. HER DEBUT NOVEL, DE FENIKS, WAS PUBLISHED IN 2005 BY MEULENHOFF AND MANTEAU (OF AMSTERDAM AND ANTWERP) AND WAS SHORTLISTED FOR THE VROUW EN KULTUUR AWARD FOR FEMALE WRITERS. SHE IS ALSO THE AUTHOR OF TWO CHILDREN’S BOOKS PUBLISHED BY MACMILLAN LONDON. HER LATEST NOVEL IS ON BLACK SISTERS STREET (JONATHAN CAPE, UK 2009; RANDOM HOUSE NY, 2011).

  • Sanneke Van Hassel

    Sanneke Van Hassel

    SANNEKE VAN HASSEL STUDIED THEATRE ARTS AND CULTURAL HISTORY. HER DEBUT COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES IJSREGEN (ICE RAIN), PUBLISHED IN 2005, WAS NOMINATED FOR SEVERAL LITERARY AWARDS. IN 2006 SHE WROTE ABOUT EVERY DAY LIFE IN SARAJEVO AFTER A THREE-WEEK STAY: PIECES OF SARAJEVO. IN 2007 SHE PUBLISHED HER SECOND COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES TITLED WITTE VEDER (WHITE FEATHER). FOR THIS BOOK SHE WON THE BNG LITERARY AWARD. SHE IS CURRENTLY WORKING ON A THIRD COLLECTION, EZELS (DONKEYS), WHICH WILL BE OUT IN FEBRUARY 2012, AND—TOGETHER WITH FLEMISH WRITER ANNELIES VERBEKE—ON AN ANTHOLOGY OF SHORT STORIES FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD: NAAR DE STAD (TO THE CITY) FOR APRIL 2012. SHE LIVES AND WORKS IN ROTTERDAM.

  • Mart Smeets

    Mart Smeets

    Mart Smeets is a long-time sports presenter and commentator with the Dutch public broadcaster NOS. He is most famous for his reporting of the Tour de France, but also comments on speedskating, basketball (Smeets played at national level himself), and most other sports, apart from football (although he did present a news program around the 2006 FIFA World Cup). The 2012 Tour de France was his last assignment during his NOS tenure; he announced he'd continue to work for them as a freelancer.

  • Simon Kuper

    Simon Kuper

    Simon Kuper is a British author. He writes about sports "from an anthropologic perspective." Kuper was born in Uganda of South African parents, and moved to Leiden in the Netherlands as a child, where his father, Adam Kuper, was a lecturer in anthropology at Leiden University.

  • Abdelkader Benali

    Abdelkader Benali

    Abdelkader Benali is a Moroccan-Dutch writer and journalist. When he was four years old, he and his family, of Berber background, migrated to The Netherlands and settled in Rotterdam, where his father worked as a butcher. When he was twenty-one his debut novel Bruiloft aan zee (Wedding by the Sea) appeared and was a huge critical and commercial success. It was translated into many languages. He received the Libris Prize for his second novel, De langverwachte ("The Long-Awaited").

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