Writer, editor, translator, producer, director

About me

I write, edit, translate, produce, direct and sometimes perform fiction and non-fiction. I miss the performing bit. 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'm 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. I am now completing a book about my experiences in China in the early noughties, swiftly to be followed by a YA novel I've had in the works for some time.

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.

Sit still...

It is difficult to know what to write in times like these. When C-19 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 got quieter, but people are still yapping away through every available outlet, in fact lots of people seem to have even more time to yap...

The nick of time

I am in overdrive. Not only am I finishing the writing of a book, I am translating the parts already written while helping raise funds and sort legal and business aspects of its publication. All this is very exciting and after years of work for two people a real race against time. I love firing on all cylinders, but am not really a fan of the deadline. Call it a lifeline then. Get it done.

Tales worth telling

When I was a teenager my parents took me to see an adviser to help me choose a path to take after school. The adviser liked me, had me do tests he normally didn't give high school students, interviewed me extensively, and in his final analysis told me I was full of promise, but had no story to tell. What makes a story worth telling? What is having something to say?