Simone Atangana Bekono, born in 1991 in the Netherlands, studied Creative Writing at the ArtEZ Institute of Art in Arnhem, graduating in 2016 with hoe de eerste vonken zichtbaar waren (How the First Sparks Became Visible), a collection of poems and letters. In 2018, this brought her the Poëziedebuutprijs aan Zee and in 2019 the Charlotte Köhler Fellowship. An English edition of “how the first sparks became visible” translated by David Colmer will be published later in 2020 in the UK by Emma Press. Simone Atananga Bekono’s poems deal with the effects on the individual of prejudice because of skin colour and gender and explore the relationship between (her own black female) body and identity and the possibilities of expressing this in poetry.
Publication:
hoe de eerste vonken zichtbaar waren. Wintertuin Uitgeverij & Lebowski Publishers, 2017