Writer, editor, translator, producer, director

About me

I write, edit, translate, produce, direct and sometimes perform fiction and non-fiction. I was born and raised in the Netherlands, then studied in the US and the UK and I started my professional life as an actress and a director's and producers' assistant based in London. I am trilingual English-Dutch-French, I write in English and I translate my own work into Dutch. My books LIVING IRON, co-authored with Pauline van Lynden, and SOPHIE STEENGRACHT IN PERU, were both published at the end of 2018. At the moment I am completing several projects, so I hope to have more work to show soon.

more about me

LIVING IRON

by Vanessa Everts and Pauline van Lynden

Iron is everywhere around us and within us. It is vital to organisms – it colours our blood as well as the earth. We admire people with an iron constitution and a steely determination, and almost everything we do involves iron and steel in some form. This book describes the fascinating life of iron and our life with iron and steel, from the earliest days of our planet to our growing ironworking techniques and the miracles that are achieved through metallurgy today. It delves into an exceptional combination of qualities no other material offers us and shows us why, through millenia of rust, recycling and reinvention, this tough stuff continues to reveal enormous potential for our world and our future.

Sophie Steengracht in Peru

The travels and work of a young artist fascinated by mythology, magic realism, transformation and the intertwinement of man and nature. Her drawings, paintings and sculptures are filled with mythical creatures, flora, fauna, the earth and the sky. This book explores the process of making art and what inspiration means when you have to inspire yourself every day.

Residue

‘Do you have trouble finishing things?’ asked my great-aunt, shortly before she died. No one had dared ask me that, but plenty more must have thought it. Even to those who understand the long haul a creative project and a creative career can be, my progress must look murky, and I do sympathise. My stories seem to grow like elephant babies, so slowly that only my mother is still confident they will eventually see the light of day.

This is not a book stack

It's Book Lovers Day, apparently – or was. Help. I wonder, are there any book lovers who like a book stack? Not the kind that accumulates by your bed, but the kind you keep seeing on your screen. Piles of newly published works with spines unbroken, their contents, one suspects, unread, the selection of titles entirely predictable, synchronised with the review pages in every newspaper in the land.

Sit still...

It is difficult to know what to write in times like these. When Covid hit my part of the world there was all this talk of the supposed stillness that was about to descend on us, but the noise, to my ears, has been deafening. The streets may have become quieter, but people are still yapping away through every available outlet, in fact lots of people seem to have even more time to yap than before.