Leon S. Verraest was born in Kortrijk in 1986. They studied Dutch and French literature and linguistics at Ghent University and Aix-Marseille Université (2004-2007) and subsequently obtained a Master’s degree in Comparative Modern Literature (Ghent University, 2008). With a scholarship for specialization granted by the Flemish Community, they were enrolled in an M.A. of Philosophy at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski during the academic year of 2008-2009, after which they were employed on a doctoral research project funded by the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research (FWO). The results of this research are documented in the dissertation entitled ‘Eutopia Unbound: Imagining Good Places in Narratives from 1945 to the Present,’ which Verraest successfully defended in 2016. They were since employed at Ghent University in various positions, most recently as 'Onderwijsbegeleider Algemene Literatuurwetenschap,' at the MA Program 'Vergelijkende Moderne Letterkunde' (Comparative Modern Literature). They also teach at the KASK School of Arts in Ghent and are, outside of these institutes, active as an author and performer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, in Dutch, English, and West-Flemish. In that capacity, they were pre-selected for the prestigious Iowa International Writing Program (2020) and selected for a Fiction Fellowship by the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation for Creative Writing (2018), a Writing Fellowship by the Akademie Schloss Solitude Stuttgart (2020), for the Pogon Zagreb international fellowship and residency (2021), for residency at Het Huis van Herman Teirlinck (2022), as Deus Ex Machina talent of the year (2022), and for the Letteristen collective of De Letterie (2023-4), among others. They live in Brussels and are working on a novel. Research interests include: multi- and translingualism in writing and literature; mother tongue concepts; imagination and experience of spaces, cities, landscapes; flash fiction and the short-story form; water and hydro-feminism; Brussels and its (Southern) Periphery; folklore 2.0 and how to reimagine folktales and rituals.
