Rutger De Vries was born in 1985 in Utrecht and studied architectural history and Dutch cultural heritage at the University of Amsterdam. After a stint cataloging maps in the Special Collections of Leiden University, he spent several years working as a night porter on the Wadden Islands, where foghorns, salt wind, and lighthouse stairs found their way into his fiction. His fantasy blends folklore, found family, and the quietly uncanny corners of the Low Countries. He lives in Nijmegen with his partner and an indignant black cat named Draad, and when not writing he restores secondhand bicycles and volunteers with a local reading program.
