Els Demerlier is a Belgian novelist and translator whose fiction braids romance with craft, language, and questions of inheritance. Raised in Bruges and educated in Romance languages at KU Leuven, she later lived in Apulia, where she apprenticed with a bookbinder and fell for the acoustics of lemon groves and white-stone towns. Her translations of contemporary Italian poetry have appeared in European journals and on public radio features.
Demerlier's earlier novels include Salt on Marble and The Vine That Climbs the Sky, the latter shortlisted for the Flanders New Voices Prize and a finalist for the European Romantic Fiction Award. Her work crosses literary romance, intimate family drama, and stories of restoration and place, often set between Flanders and Southern Italy; recent publications include Il Mezzogiorno (2024).
Els Demerlier lives in Ghent and spends part of each year in Ostuni. She teaches a summer seminar on sensory detail and setting, collects antique nibs and vellum offcuts, and can parallel-park a dove-blue Vespa on a sunbaked vicolo. When she isn't writing, she volunteers with arts-education nonprofits and is learning to identify olive varietals by scent alone.
