The Bronzen Uil Award 2022, the prize for the best Dutch-language Debut will be handed out 10 December 2022. In 2018, she was moderator of the Winternachten festival conversations with writers Nino Haratischwili and Alain Mabanckou.

Aleksandra and diepdiepblauw are both shortlisted for the 2022 Bronzen Uil Award. Last year, Lisa Weeda, author and literary programme maker, published her debut novel Aleksandra, an impressive family story set in her grandmother's motherland, Ukraine. The book has been all over Booktok, TikTok and Instagram for a while now, surprising (especially young) readers with its plot and genre: 'queer horror' and 'gothic' are terms that often come up.

In the book, a deep-sea explorer gets stuck in a submarine at the bottom of the sea for longer than planned and returns 'changed' to her wife. That's just absurd.'īritish author Julia Armfield (1990) published in 2022 her debut novel Our Wives Under the Sea. You see her sitting at the edge of the pool, wearing black lipstick so that her own mouth looks like a blowhole, shouting words at that dolphin. In it, Margaret Howe tries to teach dolphins to talk with their blowhole. In Dutch weekly news magazine De Groene Amsterdammer, when asked what the most enjoyable moment was while writing her novel, she replied: 'For the chapter on dolphins, I watched the documentary The Dolphin House. Writer and radio producer Nikki Dekker (1989) released her debut novel diepdiepblauw (Deep Deep Blue) in Summer 2022, a powerful debut novel about identity, shell collecting, growing up and bisexual infatuation, interspersed with fiction and facts about life underwater. Where does these young authors' interest in marine life come from, and why do they express this fascination in a wonderful combination of narrative fiction, nature book and essay? Writers Unlimited brought together these two talented young authors with a fascination for oceans and queerness! Lisa Weeda interviewed them in Writers Series on Thursday evening 24 November 2022 in Zaal 3, The Hague about, among other things, the attraction of the sea and about writing lesbian or bisexual love stories. diepdiepblauw is shortlisted for the Bronzen Uil (Bronze Owl) 2022 for best Dutch-language debut. Both books describe mysterious sea creatures and the complexities of queer relationships between young women. Summer 2022 two beautiful and strong debut novels were published: Julia Armfield's Our Wives Under the Sea ('the year's most terrifying love story' says AnOther Mag) and Nikki Dekker's diepdiepblauw.

Our wives under the sea