The Dutch Writer Thomas Olde Heuvelt’s US Summer Book Tour

Thomas Olde Heuvelt (born 1983) is a Dutch writer whose horror novel “HEX” has been sold to nine languages in fourteen countries, among them US, France, China and Brazil. His short stories have received awards like the Hugo Award for Best Novelette, the Dutch Paul Harland Prize, and has been nominated for two additional Hugo Awards and a World Fantasy Award.

Thomas Olde Heuvelt was born in Nijmegen, Netherlands. He studied English language and American Literature at the Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen and at the University of Ottawa in Canada, where he lived for half a year. In many interviews, he recalled that the literary heroes of his childhood were Roald Dahl and Stephen King, who created a love for grim and dark fiction. He later discovered the works of a wider range of contemporary writers like Jonathan Safran Foer, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Neil Gaiman and Yann Martel, whom he calls his greatest influences.

Thomas Olde Heuvelt wrote his debut novel “De Onvoorziene” (The Unforeseen) in Dutch at the age of sixteen. It was published with a small press in 2002, followed in 2004 by “PhantasAmnesia“, a 600-page novel in which he combined horror with humor and satire. Since 2008, his novels have been published with major Dutch publishing house Luitingh-Sijthoff.

Thomas Olde Heuvelt is a multiple winner of the Harland Award for best Dutch Work of the Fantastic (2009 and 2012). Translated into English, his short story “The Boy Who Cast No Shadow” published by PS Publishing in the UK, together with Carlos Ruiz Zafón received the Honorable Mention in the Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Awards in 2012. The same story was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 2013.

In April, 2013, Tor Books released his story “The Ink Readers of Doi Saket” in e-book. It would be nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Short Story and the World Fantasy Award.

His story, “The Day The World Turned Upside Down“, published with Lightspeed Magazine, won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 2015.

In 2016, Olde Heuvelt’s worldwide debut novel “HEX” was published in the US with Tor Books and in the UK and Australia with Hodder and Stoughton. Horror novelist Stephen King tweeted about the book, calling it “totally, brilliantly original”.  The publication is followed by a six-week book tour through the US.

Honors

2005 Paul Harland Prize (Debut Prize) for “De kronieken van een weduwnaar” (The Chronicles of a Widower)

2009 Paul Harland Prize (Winner) for “The Boy Who Cast No Shadow” (Dutch version)

2012 Paul Harland Prize (Winner) for “Fishbowl Universe” (Dutch version)

2012 Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Awards (Honorable Mention, together with Carlos Ruiz Zafón) for “The Boy Who Cast No Shadow” (US)

2013 Hugo Award (Nomination) for “The Boy Who Cast No Shadow”

2014 Hugo Award (Nomination) for “The Ink Readers of Doi Saket”

2014 World Fantasy Award (Nomination) for “The Ink Readers of Doi Saket”

2015 Hugo Award (winner) for “The Day the World Turned Upside Down”

Bibliography

2016 “HEX” (Hodder & Stoughton, UK; Tor Books, US)

Short Fiction in English

2010 “Harlequin on Dam Square” (Oxygen Books, UK)

2012 “The Boy Who Cast No Shadow” (PS Publishing, UK)

2013 “The Ink Readers of Doi Saket” (Tor Books, US)

2014 “The Day the World Turned Upside Down” (Lightspeed Magazine, US)

Novels in Dutch

2002 “De Onvoorziene” (Intes International)

2004 “PhantasAmnesia” (Intes International)

2008 “Leerling Tovenaar Vader & Zoon” (Luitingh-Sijthoff)

2011 “Harten Sara” (Luitingh-Sijthoff)

2013 “HEX” (Luitingh-Sijthoff)