Contact Details
Anton Verstraete 1, Neighbours Cottages Idbury OX7 6SA United Kingdom +44 (0)1993 831046 anton@verstraete.co.uk |
Hi, I'm Anton Verstraete. I grew up in Holland and moved to England in
1996, when I was about 25. I've now gone back to being a creative writer after a
fifteen-year-long interruption in which I worked for a couple of years
as the (atheist!?) Church Administrator of the gorgeous University Church of St Mary the Virgin in the very centre of gorgeous Oxford, then as Manager of a very posh Art Gallery, again central Oxford,
offering graphic artworks by, amongst others, John Piper and Henry Moore
and selling the 100-odd artworks of the unique Hope & Optimism Portfolio. In 1999 I started working first as secretary to some of the Professors
but soon as Internet Developer for
Nuffield College, Oxford University, meanwhile becoming
increasingly familiar with the programing language ASP.NET and,
much more importantly, with the English language. I was made redundant in 2007, partly due to the credit crunch, partly
due to my Multiple Sclerosis.
I have now abandoned the ASP.NET programming altogether
and I'm working on things such as story lines, characters. Nothing's urgent.
During the roughly half a decade after my leaving my Calvinistic Dutch village life behind and before subsequently leaving Holland altogether (first to New York in 1994, then to England in 1996) I studied literature at the university of Groningen, but I also organised and hosted with a friend a bimonthly creative writing show at a theatre there, and I began publishing my short stories first locally in and around Groningen, but ultimately three times in the prestigious Hollands Maandblad and thus in shops around the country. The first of those three publications was also published in a short stories anthology a year later. But I moved to England. graduating by email in 1999, and became increasingy ill (MS) and I’m by now mostly in bed with my laptop, being creative. |