Kristien Hemmerechts
(Belgium, 1955) writes widely on wide-ranging topics, from poetry about her late husband Herman de Coninck in Taal zonder mij (Language without Me, 1998) to the struggle of an anorexia patient in her book Ann (2008). The human condition is always central to her extensive oeuvre. Her work also pays a noticeable amount of attention to the female sexual experience. In her novel De waar gebeurde geschiedenis van Victor en Clara Rooze (The True History of Victor and Clara Rooze), Hemmerechts plays with fact and fiction: a writer with writer's block tackles a story of incest to give free reign to her thoughts about writing and literature. Haar Bloed (Her Blood) appeared in 2012, for which she spent time in a hematology ward. In 2014 she caused an uproar with De vrouw die de honden eten gaf (The Woman Who Fed the Dogs), a novel inspired by the Dutroux case. Her latest novel Alles verandert (Everything Changes) closely follows the plot of J.M. Coetzee's In Ongenade (Disgrace), but with a female protagonist. How much does the gender of literary characters determine our view of their actions?
Past events
The writer as accomplice
Writers like to give bad guys their say. The novel Muidhond generates sympathy for Jonathan, a convicted pedophile; in Alles verandert Iris violates a student but shifts from offender to victim. Are the authors accomplices to these unconscionable deeds?
Debate: Is Man Behind all the World's Evil?
Hemmerechts and Benali use their humour and incisiveness to defend opposite views on the question "Is man behind all the world's evil? (and behind him, woman?)". In other words: Is testosterone the source of all evil?
Shameless
How shameless or how intimate do writers dare to be? Do they feel embarrassed by their own divulgences or do they enjoy their shamelessness? Kristien Hemmerechts, Ted van Lieshout and Yasmine Allas give themselves away. Host: Elsbeth Etty. In Dutch.
It really happened
Gerrit Komrij, Kristien Hemmerechts, P.F. Thomése and Naima el Bezaz in a debate on the question: how real is literary non-fiction really? Komrij opens with a pamphlet. Hosted by Koen Kleijn. In Dutch.
