Authors
Anja Sicking Novelist Netherlands
Anja Sicking was born in Hague in 1965. She studied the clarinet at the Royal Conservatory. After receiving her diploma, she formed a part of various chamber music ensembles such as the ‘Ebony Quartet’ and from time to time she played in symphony orchestras. Earlier on, she had discovered that she enjoyed moving outside the traditional musical paths. Thus, she went on tour with a street symphony orchestra, ‘the Ricciotti Ensemble’ a few times, with which she ended up amongst other places in Moscow and played on the Red Square. She also contributed to several music theatre productions. As time went by, she also started writing stories. Winning a literature award encouraged her to continue as did the invitations to write radio stories for a Dutch art and culture program. As writing and making music became difficult to combine, she chose literature. Her debut, The Keurisquartet (a quartet named after the modern Dutch composer, Tristan Keuris), was not only awarded an important award for young Dutch writers ━the Marten Toonder/Geertjan Lubberhuizenprijs━ in 2000, but also nominated for two other literature awards. Her second novel, The Silent Sin (2005) was also very successful. It was translated into German and English, and was, among other awards, nominated for the international IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Anja Sicking, who lives in Amsterdam with her family and teaches at a school for writers there, is current trying to find the time to finish her third novel, which takes place in the seventies and deals with a group of students in Hague.
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