Joke van Leeuwen

Joke van Leeuwen was born in 1952 in TheHague and moved
to Amsterdam at the age of two. She grew up in an environment that stimulated creativity. In 1966 the family moved to Belgium. She studied history at the University of Brussels and graphic arts at the Royal Academy in Antwerp and at the Sint Lukas Institute in Brussels. In 1978 she won the Delft Student Cabaret Festival. She developed her idiosyncratic talents in many ways, as a novelist, poet, children's book author, illustrator, performer.

She has been translated into many languages and received numerous prizes in different countries for all these genres, including the Golden Pen and the Golden Pencil, Woutertje Pieterse Prijs (awarded by critics), the C. Buddingh Prijs for new Dutch poetry, Gouden Uil and Jonge Gouden Uil (Flemish literary prizes), the Dutch ‘Theo Thijssen’ Prijs and the Deutscher Jugendbuch Preis. One of her poems has been awarded as one of the three best poems of 2001. She was also nominated for the H.C. Andersen Prize and the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. She received the Gouden Ganzenveer (Golden Goose Quill) for her contribution to Dutch Literature.