Anna López Dekker

Anna López Dekker (1970) has always lived in many worlds. With a Dutch mother and a Cuban father, she grew up in Barcelona: a nice mix of cultures. Then there are many worlds in her head, which she always wanted to share through stories.

Still, being able to write novels came as a surprise to her. After focussing on music for years, she had her first idea for a book: a Y.A. fantasy novel, written in Spanish to read it with her students. This book was published in Spain in 2016. It was the first time she created a whole culture, and it gave her a thirst for more.

In her daily life she is a teacher. She tries to get teenagers to learn Spanish, and usually succeeds. Administrative nonsense aside, she loves working with that age group. She enjoys their twists of mind, the teenage humour, and seeing them develop. They are also a constant source of inspiration to her.

Anna is fascinated by why people do what they do. To her, fantasy is the perfect way to explore human nature: an imaginary world with different rules helps create completely new situations for characters to respond to. Besides that, she loves “What if?”. What if there was a plant that stimulates a specific part of the brain? What if there were only two kinds of elemental magic, instead of four? What if the human mind could be physically separated from the body? This kind of questions sparks her stories.

Meeting Rianne Lampers was the main reason she started writing in Dutch. When she saw how much great fantasy is being written in the language, she wanted to be a part of that. She is very proud of her first Dutch book, Lathrain 1- De band, published by Celtica Publishing in 2019. The conclusion of this fantasy diptych, Lathrain 2 - De tocht appeared in 2020. In 2022 her special fantasy sf novel De Geestenmeesterswas published, followed end of 2023 by the – similarly special fantasy sf Kweekvijver. Anna hopes many books will follow for she has enough questions left.

You can follow Anna’s books on @exlibrisanna on Facebook and she has a brand new website: www.exlibrisanna.com.