Jante Wortel

(The Netherlands, 1996) is a writer of short stories, essays, and novels. Her first novel, Weerlicht (2022), was nominated for De Bronzen Uil, Best Book for Young People, and the Hebban Debut Prize. The novel is a powerful debut about the suffocating dynamics of a family and the question of how to help someone who is compulsively destroying themselves with an eating disorder. Her second novel, Ik, de ander (Me, the Other, 2025), slowly but surely draws you into the quicksand of a toxic relationship. Together with author Corinne Heyrman, she performs in the theatrical performance Onder de huid (Under the Skin) about the porous relationship between the character, the writer, and the world. In Het ongemak van een lichaam (The Discomfort of a Body, to be published in January 2026 by De Arbeiderspers), Jante and Corinne interweave their experiences of writing about an eating disorder, allowing honesty in it, and the taboo that surrounds it.

Instagram: @bospeens