KU Leuven welcomes new in-house writer
Writer and performer Maud Vanhauwaert is KU Leuven’s new writer-in-residence for the academic year 2023-2024. She follows in the footsteps of Bart Moeyaert, Annelies Verbeke and Saskia De Coster. As the university’s in-house writer, Vanhauwaert will, among other things, teach a course in ‘creative writing’, but will also curate a poetry course in the context of 600 years of KU Leuven.
Maud Vanhauwaert | © Koos Breukel
Maud Vanhauwaert (°1984, Veurne) studied Language and Literature at KU Leuven and UAntwerp and also obtained a master’s degree in Word Art at the Antwerp Conservatory. For her poetry debut ‘I am possible’ (2011, publisher Querido) she received the Woman Debuut Prize. For her collection ‘Wij zijn evenwijdig_’ (2014, Querido) she received the Hugues C. Pernath Prize and the Audience Prize of the Herman De Coninck Competition. In 2018 and 2019 she was city poet of Antwerp. ‘The city in me’ (Das Mag Publishers) was published in May 2020 and was awarded the Jan Campert Prize. Maud writes, often performs her own work, is a teacher and writes a column twice a week on the front page of De Morgen.
“I often look for playful ways to make poetry public. I find it interesting to detach poetry from the familiar sheet of paper and bring it to the stage or public space. What happens when you give the text a new context? I like to be guided by that question.”
Vanhauwaert’s first novel will be published in September 2023. “It will be a novel with a layer of poetry. There will be a special edition with a Japanese binding. You will have to tear the book open to read the story. It will be my prose debut, but the book will fit because of its somewhat special form. with my previous work, I always try to arrange a marriage between content and form.”
Who is Maud Vanhauwaert?
°1984 , Veurne
Studied
2002–2004 : Candidates Germanic Languages (Dutch-English)
2004–2010 : Bachelor + Master Word Art Antwerp + Teacher training
2004-2010 : continuation of ‘Germanic’ in the bachelor Language and Literature at the UA + Master Multilingual Professional Communication.
Maud is a performer and author of poetry collections, columns and texts for performance.
‘I am possible’ (2011, publisher Querido), Woman Debuut Prize
‘We are parallel’ (2014, Querido), Hughues C. Pernath Prize and the Audience Prize of the Herman De Coninck competition.
‘The City in Me’ (2020, Das Mag), Jan Campertprijs.
Full-length solo performances ‘It’s worth it’ and ‘My point is actually’, with tours throughout Flanders.
Finalist World Poetry Slam Championship (Paris, 2012) and the Leids Cabaret Festival (Leiden, 2014)
Winner of the Groot Nederlands Dictee among the prominent people (2013)
Liesbet Heyvaert, dean of the Faculty of Arts and one of the driving forces behind the writer-in-residence program, explains the importance of this university writer: “Maud Vanhauwaert tries again and again to break open the genre of poetry in different ways. and make it more accessible. In this way she reaches new readers and makes new connections with other arts and sciences. She stands in the world with her literature. This makes her ideally suited to curate a poetry course – a fairly unique assignment for a writer-in-residence, even from an international perspective – in dialogue with art and science. For KU Leuven 2025, but with a sustainable footprint on the university space for the next 600 years.”
Bart Raymaekers, rectoral advisor for culture, art and heritage and also one of the driving forces behind the writer-in-residence program, shares this opinion: “With the writer-in-residence, KU Leuven is looking for an original way to among a broad group of students. The direct interaction between writer and reader provides a unique surplus. Students from all disciplines can take their reading and writing hunger to a higher level here”.
Creative writing
Maud Vanhauwaert currently teaches various writing courses at the Conservatory of Antwerp and, as writer-in-residence, will teach a course in creative writing at the Faculty of Arts at KU Leuven. The course is open to Master’s students from all study programmes. Fifteen students are selected on the basis of a motivation letter, who will work with the author for a semester.
“I once studied at KU Leuven myself and I think it is very special that I can now start working there as a teacher. In my own study path I was always in a split, with one foot in the academic world, the other in the artistic world. It was a challenge to find balance in this. I therefore very much welcome the fact that the university wants to devote attention to creative writing. In this way, the forced schism between science and art is closed. I am convinced that many interesting writers will emerge from this.”
As an in-house writer, Maud will also curate a poetry course in the context of 600 years of KU Leuven. A number of these poems will be permanently realized in the urban and university landscape of Leuven.