Jan-Willem Anker

May 07, 2019 Jan-Willem Anker is a writer of poetry, fiction and non-fiction. He was born in 1978 in Rotterdam and grew up in the small city of Oosterhout in Noord-Brabant, then studied Comparative Literature in Utrecht. Between 2004 and 2008 he worked as a programmer for Rotterdam’s Poetry International Festival, and in 2005 he published his first collection of poems, Inzinkingen [Sinkings] for which he was awarded the 2006 Jo Peters Poetry Prize. The same year his second collection Donkere arena [Dark Arena] appeared, followed in 2009 by Wij zijn de laatste geliefden in de wereld [We Are the Last Lovers in the World]. In 2013 he published a book of prose poems Beproevingen [Tribulations] and in 2019 his fourth book of poems, Ware aard [True Nature]. In 2012 Anker made his debut as a fiction writer with the historical novel Een beschaafde man [A Civilised Man], about the life of Thomas Bruce, the seventh earl of Elgin, of Elgin marbles fame. In 2015, Anker wrote a journal about his life in a gentrifying district of Amsterdam, and in 2017 his second novel appeared, Vichy,  a tragicomedy about global warming. 

email: janwillem.anker AT gmail DOT com