Gerda Blees is a Dutch writer, poet and visual artist. Her first short story collection Aan doodgaan dachten we niet (We didn’t think of dying) was published in 2017, receiving wide acclaim. In 2018 she made her poetry debut with Dwaallichten, which was nominated for the C. Buddingh’ Prize for best Dutch poetry debut. Her 2020 debut novel Wij zijn licht (We are light) was nominated for the Libris Prize for best Dutch work of fiction and won the Dutch Booksellers Prize, the European Union Prize for Literature and and the Premio Salerno Libro d’Europa. The English translation by Michele Hutchison, We Are Light, appeared in 2022 with World Editions. The book has been translated into nine languages, including German, Italian, Spanish and Slovenian.
In 2022 Blees published her most recent poetry collection, Week (Week). In the same year she graduated from the DOGtime department of the Rietveld Academy, with visual work about the Bijlmer plane crash, a 1992 accident where a Boeing cargo airplane crashed into an apartment building in the Bijlmermeer, at that time a poor migrant neighbourhood in Amsterdam. She is working on a novel about the crash, which will appear in 2026.
Next to her visual and literary work, Blees works in and on the Poetry Clinic (Poëziepoli) where she makes custom poems on her typewriter for patients, visitors and employees of different hospitals. She also has a weekly column in the Dutch national newspaper de Volkskrant, writing about her attempts to implement some of the good ideas she has to improve her life and those of others.
