Inez van Dullemen (1925–2021)

Inez van Dullemen was born and raised in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Her father Nout van Dullemen was Attorney General and her mother Jo de Wit was a writer. After World War II, she went to England as an au pair and began writing. She made her literary debut in 1949 with her novel Ontmoeting met de andere (Meet the Other). She won a travel grant in 1950 for Het wiel (The Wheel) and lived for a year in Spain and then in Paris, where she met Erik Vos, a theater director. The couple married in 1954. In 1961 she received the Multatulip Prize for De oude man (The Old Man); in 1967, the ANWB Prize for Op zoek naar de olifant (Looking for the Elephant). In 1965, she and her ​​family went to the USA, where they spent two years. One result was her 1969 novel Luizenjournaal (Luiz's Journal), about the flight of the Mormons to Salt Lake City. In 1976, she published Vroeger is dood (The Past Is Dead), about the death of her parents, which broke through to a wider audience and was adapted into a Dutch film in 1987. In the 1980s, after traveling through Alaska, Kenya, Mexico, India, Nepal and Japan, she wrote books about her journeys, such as Een zwarte hand op mijn borst (A Black Hand on My Chest, 1983). She has also written biographical works such Het land van rood en zwart (The Land of Red and Black, 1993), based on the life of environmentalist Gertrude Blom; and Maria Sibylla, een ongebruikelijke passie (Maria Sibylla, An Unusual Passion, 2001), about painter Maria Sibylla Merian. In 1989, she won the Anna Bijns Prize for her body of work.