Valentijn Hoogenkamp is a Dutch artist and writer. In 2021, he published his first novel ‘Het aanbidden van Louis Claus’ with the publishing house De Bezige Bij. It was nominated for the Anton Wachterprijs. In 2023, it was translated by Stefanie Ochel and published by Atlantik as ‘Ich und Louis Claus.’

His second book ‘Antiboy’ is a personal essay about his coming-of-gender. ‘Antiboy’ received four stars in NRC-Handelsblad. In 2024, it will be translated by Michele Hutchinson and published by Seagull Books in the UK, the US and India. In search of more gender-diverse stories, he made the podcast ‘Antiboy: de podcast’in which artists and activists share their own journey of becoming visible as themselves.

His stories were published in De Volkskrant, De Groene Amsterdammer, De Standaard, Financieel Dagblad, and Harpers Bazaar. He has performed at many literary events and music festivals such as Lowlands, Oerol, Zwarte Cross, De Parade and Crossing Border. His plays won the El Hizjra Literature price and were nominated for the IT’s Ro Theater Award and selected for Women Playwright’s International Stockholm and Interplay Madrid.

Currently, he is writing essays about literature and intimacy and he’s working on his third novel.

The press on Adoring Louis Claus

Youth, adversity, growing up: it is the material from which many literary debuts are built, but Hoogenkamp stands out with her crackling style and her clever dosage. **** NRC Handelsblad

This is the beginning of true writing. **** De Volkskrant

The award-winning playwright’s coming-of-age cocktail tastes like cranberry breezes, Goldstrike and heartbreaking loneliness. De Standaard

The press on Antiboy

Hoogenkamp himself is on the cover, and makes no secret of the fact that this book is about him. But it is appropriate to make himself into a character, this book is not an ego document that mainly has to convey the unvarnished facts of his life; it is primarily a literary work, cleverly and visually composed, stylistically mature. So many sentences that jump out, that you want to read. (…) And what is gender if not a story we tell each other? It is wonderful how literature and life come together smoothly here, forming each other’s necessary conditions. ****NRC Handelsblad

Hoogenkamp is most moving when he gives free rein to his word art and imagination. The lyrical passages and Hoogenkamp’s eye for unusual details make reading this at times painfully harrowing story a thrilling literary experience. (…) Whatever you want to call it, this account is, more than anything else, a sensitively worded and heartbreaking demand for acceptance and love. De Standaard

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