About

Past my prime, I can safely say that life has thrown me many opportunities and challenges and it still does – I learn and I grow. In another life I have been busy with temporary vegetable picking and other odd occupations. I was a librarian, a journalist, a columnist, a writer for a woman’s magazine. Today I work as a communication specialist. This task has thrown me quite around a bit as I worked for several international humanitarian (eg. Doctors Without Borders) and multilateral organisations (UN), in Africa and India. I have visited beautiful and ugly corners in this world. I have seen war, famine, poverty, and sickness, and what it can do to us humans.

To research my novel “Der private Himmel” I spent some time with a tribe of the indigenous San in the East of Namibia. Through all this, there is one thing that stuck with me. Life is full of injustice, unnecessarily so. Poetry and writing is my refuge, it helps me to digest and to stand up against it. Not that I will be changing the world with it. But somehow I came to realize that music, art, poetry and literature often break barriers and boundaries and can overcome obstacles between humans. For the same purpose I also studied intercultural communication later in my life. The main goal was to at least try to understand what unites and what divides us. Trying to bridge the gaps is what keeps me going…

On a more personal note: I am Dutch by origin and Swiss by naturalisation, and married to an artist. We have a dog and live in Switzerland.