I was born in the south of Holland and moved to Amsterdam at age eighteen to study clinical psychology. After graduating I continued working in the restaurant business, which I’d done throughout university to pay the bills. Apart from a year’s internship I would never work as a psychologist.
Writing is something I’ve done all my life, but that I’ve only recently begun to take seriously. Four years ago I enrolled in the SVS, the only creative writing school in my country, but after three years I decided that if I wanted to be a writer, all I had to do was start.
Since then my work has been published in TIRADE! literary magazine and De Volkskrant, one of Holland’s largest newspapers. The short ‘David’, was made into a film and broadcast on national television. I just finished working on my first collection of stories, which I hope will be in bookstores by january 2012.
At this point I am collaborating with graphic artist Jeroen Peter on a comic book version of my story ‘Grijs als de stad is’, and working on a collection of photo-based flash fiction under the working title ‘Beeld’.
James Salter: Light Years; Truman Capote: Other Voices, Other Rooms; Paul Auster: Mr. Vertigo; John S. Foer: Everything is Illuminated; A.M. Homes: Things You Should Know; Amy Hempel: Collected Stories; Ernest Hemingway: A Moveable Feast; Julie Orringer: How to breathe Under Water: Rupert Thomson: The Insult; John Berger: To the Wedding; Chuck Paluhniuk: Fight Club; J.M. Coetzee: In the Heart of the Country; Salman Rushdie: Midnight's Children. I could go on, and on, and on.
No one has written on Gilles van der Loo's wall.
No one has written on Gilles van der Loo's wall.