Frans Kellendonk, Dutch Writer

b. 7th January 1951
d. 15 February 1990

Professor of English language and literature in the Netherlands. He was also a novelist, who won the Ferdinand Bordewijk Prijs in 1987 for his novel Mystiek lichaam. This work attracted criticism in gay circles for its alleged homophobia, but Kellendonk was himself gay, and died of complications following AIDS a month after his 39th birthday.

Kellendonk studied English Language and Culture at the University of Nijmegen. He also studied for a time in England, and later worked at Utrecht University, the Free University and the University of Amsterdam. Besides his academic career as lecturer in English language and literature, Kellendonk wrote several stories and novels which brought him literary fame.His stylistic skill was praised, but his cultural criticism often maligned.Kellendonk's alleged neo-conservative world view, with a revaluation of traditional values, was far from fashionable in the Netherlands of the eighties. Kellendonk's literary home. from 1978 to 1983 was the magazine The Government  where he was editor in chief .

He debuted as a writer in May 1977 with the collection of stories “Bouwval“ (Ruin), for which he was awarded.the Anton Wachter Prize, established in that year. The novel  "Mystiek Lichaam" (Mystical Body)(1986) is his most successful work. The book was acclaimed, awarded the Ferdinand Bordewijk Prize and was nominated for the AKO Literature Prize, but it also drew allegations against Kellendonk of anti-Semitism and homophobia. .In gay circles, where Kellendonk was known to be homosexual, the vision of homosexuality as "sterile lifestyle" was controversial. Kellendonk defended himself against this criticism with the classic argument that an author can not be held responsible for the ideas of his fictional characters.

Kellendonk belonged to the generation of AFTh. van der Heijden and de Jong Oek .

Mystical Body confirmed his place in Dutch literature. Even before the publication of that book, the first symptoms of AIDS were revealed to Kellendonk. A book about the Kerwin Duinmeijer affair that he had prepared, therefore remained unfinished.

He died one month after his 39th birthday and was buried in Amsterdam Cemetery Zorgvlied .

In accordance with instructions he left, his complete works were published in 1992. In 2006 publishing Athenaeum-Polak & Van Gennep began to reissue Kellendonk's works. In 2006 the archives of Frans Kellendonk came under the management of the Library of the Society of Dutch Literature, University of Leiden .

Hans Warren, Dutch poet, writer and literary critic

.b. October 20, 1921
d. December 18, 2001

Johannes Adrianus Menne Warren was a Dutch writer, much of whose fame in the Netherlands derived from a collection of diaries, published under the title, "Geheime Dagboek (Secret Diary)" in which he described his early life and homosexual experiences, with a frank account of his awakening as a homosexual in the countryside, his tempestuous relations with his mostly North African lovers and with his wife, who gave birth to several children. He also explains his divorce and the start of a new life, first living alone, later with his lover Mario.

He is also renowned for a fictionalised account of these early years, describing what it was like to be both Jewish and gay in the Netherlands under the Nazi occupation, in "Secretly Inside".

The publication of his series of diaries caused some concern among Warren's friends and colleagues: as the title implies, the diaries are quite frank. Warren openly describes his own life and experiences, and offers his opinions on everyone, including his friends. The twentieth volume covered the years 1996 to 1998, with one more volume to be published.

In 1952 he married an English woman, and they had three children. Soon after their marriage his wife was offered a position in Paris, where Warren's repressed homosexual feelings found an outlet in many contacts with North African boys. Although this created tension in his marriage, it also sparked his poetic career: Warren published three collections of poetry during his years in Paris, and the marriage, in the end, lasted until 1978.

In 1958 the family returned to Zeeland, and Warren produced little writing until the end of the 1960s, when the publishing company Bert Bakker published a collection of new poems by Warren, Tussen hybris en vergaan. In 1969 Warren met Gerrit Komrij and the two poets began a long and mutually inspiring friendship. During the next ten years, Warren published a new book of poetry every year.

In 1978 Warren met Mario Molegraaf, forty years his junior (Warren was 57 at that time). The two began a tumultuous love affair that lasted until Warren's death. Molegraaf was a talented writer himself, and together they published a number of translations: the entire work of Constantine P. Cavafy, several poems by George Seferis, works by Plato and Epicurius, and the four gospels.

From 1985 until 2002, Meulenhoff published a Warren calendar with a poem each day. Together with Molegraaf, Warren published several popular poetry anthologies.

Anna Blaman (Johanna Petronella Vrugt)

b. January 31, 1905
d.  July 13, 1960

Anna Blaman, pen name for Johanna Petronella Vrugt (1905-1960), not only was the most important lesbian writer in the 1950s, but also Holland's major woman author of the era. As an intellectual, a public figure, and an independent woman who did not conceal her homosexuality, she was of great importance to Dutch lesbian emancipation.

In her work, however, she expressed a pessimistic view of life, which partially was influenced by French Existentialism. Blaman's protagonists, including the lesbian Berthe in her best-known novel Eenzaam Avontuur (Lonely Adventure [1948]), experience the futility of human existence, an inadequacy in making contact and in knowing and understanding their partners. This existential loneliness is, in Blaman's view, typical of both heterosexual and homosexual individuals."

-glbtq : Dutch and Flemish Literature: