Anne Broeksma (1987) lives in Utrecht and Brussels and writes poetry, prose and essays. In 2014 she made her literary debut with the poetry collection regen kosmos kamerplant / (rain cosmos house plant) (Atlas Contact), for which she received the C.C.S. Crone Stipend. Vesper followed in 2021, and was nominated for the J.C. Bloem Poetry Prize and the Herman de Coninck Prize. The jury of the latter prize wrote: “These poems broaden your view and make you breathe deeper. It is a collection that you want to return to again and again.”

Anne wrote short stories for years as part of the Shortreads Collective and regularly writes poems for initiatives such as the podcast Scheppingsdrift, or as a City Poet for Utrecht (2017-2024). She is fiction and nonfiction editor at the Belgian literary magazine Deus Ex Machina.

Her nonfiction debut Een verhaal met schubben (‘A scaly story’), a book about pangolins, was published on World Pangolin Day, February 17th, 2024. The book is a literary search for the weirdest and most threatened mammal on earth. It is the result of seven years of travelling and obsessively searching for pangolins, in libraries, history and in the wild. In the wake of her first travels Anne also started writing about nature conservation for newspapers and magazines. Her blog Notulen bij het ongetemde (‘Notes on the untamed’) reports on all matters untamed, such as outdoor adventures or her vegetable garden next to the river Vecht in Utrecht.

Een verhaal met schubben (‘A scaly story’) gained lots of media attention in The Netherlands, was shortlisted for the first ‘Natuurboekenprijs’ (prize for best Dutch nature book of the last two years) and was mentioned by newspaper de Volkskrant as one of the best books of 2024. Newspaper Parool named it Book of the Month and wrote:

“This books reads as a dazzling trip, and no halluciongenic jungle potion is needed for that. […] Her attempt for personal rewilding and her incentive to follow our fascinations, take the book to a higher level.”

More quotes and an excerpt (all in Dutch, hopefully an English translation will follow) are available on the website of the publisher Atlas Contact.