Writer, biologist and gardener

Mariken Heitman is an acclaimed author. She is also a vegetable garden instructor at Utrecht Natuurlijk and a gardener. In her books, she innovatively explores the relationship between nature, origins, and societal views on gender.

Mariken Heitman was born on March 17, 1983, in Rheden. After high school, she moved to Utrecht to study biology. After completing her master's degree in biology, she continued her studies, specializing in biodynamic agriculture at a vocational college, where she later worked as a vegetable growing teacher. In her mid-thirties, Heitman decided to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a writer. She took a writing course, which she enjoyed so much that she began working on a novel alongside her job. This resulted in her debut novel, De wateraap (2019). After receiving rave reviews, she quit her job to focus fully on writing. Besides writing, Heitman teaches vegetable gardening to adults at the Eilandsteede City Farm for Utrecht Natuurlijk, an organization that promotes a green and sustainable Utrecht. Her background in biology serves as inspiration for her writing. Heitman often draws parallels between gardening and writing. This original approach, combined with her idiosyncratic writing style, makes Heitman an exceptional author.

Thematics

Heitman's oeuvre displays a strong connection to themes from biology, agriculture, and nature, and is coupled with an interest in the origins of both nature and human society. From this perspective, she explores issues surrounding gender and emphasizes that the conventions surrounding it are not necessarily natural. As she explains in an interview with the Utrecht bookstore Broese:

We touch something, we shape nature, and then we see it as natural, if that's what it is, and we forget our own influence.

This also illustrates Heitman's interest in prehistory. A time before the first farming societies existed, before humans began to cultivate, tame, and fence in nature. A journey to this time, in which the reader is taken, for example, in her novel Wormmaan (2021), can help to understand the relativity of relationships in our current society. In her personal life, Heitman also often clashes with the categorization of others because she does not conform to a traditional feminine appearance. According to Heitman's own explanation, there are more categories today, but categorization is still an active process. When these categories themselves are rejected, this evokes discomfort in the outside world. Or as she says in regional newspaper De Gelderlander:

I remain a stranger in the ladies' room.

These moments, which can usually evoke feelings of shame, are interesting to Heitman and also fuel her literary work. In an interview with weekly the Groene Amsterdammer, she said:

You can have your sense of who you are completely in order, only to be confronted with confusion from outside. I find that playing field interesting to write about, because who is actually confused?

For Heitman, this theme doesn't constitute a "struggle." Instead, she dismantles the so-called natural law of binary thinking about gender. Her literary work is complex, yet simultaneously relatable. For example, in Wormmaan, the main character 'Elke' has a mental conversation with "the woman I never became," which reflects the inner conflict between what is expected of "the woman" and her own personal desires, actions, and expressions.

Impact

Heitman's complex, multi-layered, and broadly thematic works have not gone unnoticed. Her debut novel, De Wateraap (2019), was nominated for the Bronze Owl, the Anton Wachter Award, and was longlisted for the Jan Wolkers Award. In 2021, Heitman received the C.C.S. Crone Scholarship, awarded by the Municipality of Utrecht in collaboration with the International Literature Festival Utrecht. Wormmaan (2021) was awarded the Libris Literature Award in 2022. Heitman is praised for her original approach and her style, which is both contemporary and timeless. In August 2024, her third book, De mierenkaravaan (The Ant Caravan), was published, which was also well-received. In 2019, Heitman participated, together with three other writers, in 'Queering the City of Literature' (QtCoL), organized by the Utrecht bookstore 'Savannah Bay'. In an interview with national newspaper de Volkskrant, Heitman recounted her first shy steps in this bookstore at the beginning of her studies, when she discovered her own lesbian sexuality and encountered queer writers for the first time. She is now considered an important queer writer herself, which is why Savannah Bay included her novels on its recommended list.

Lieve van Borssum Waalkes

Mariken Heitman about queerness in fiction, De Balie TV, January, 29, 2024 (55 sec.)