Martijn Lindeboom made his debut as an author with the historical fantasy De Legende van de Zwarte Wolven. Ten more books by him have appeared since then. Five historical stories (based on archaeology and/or history), a thriller, a collection of fantasy stories, a collection of horror stories (published by Luitingh-Sijthoff), two books around a specific theme (a collection of climate fiction stories and a book on witches) and a non-fiction book on writing fantasy and science fiction (published by Atlas Contact).
His book Lagen in Stad (written in collaboration with archaeologist Gert Kortekaas) won the title Best Book from Groningen in 2014. Besides his books Martijn has had over ninety short stories published in magazines, anthologies and as audiobooks or e-books. His new collection of speculative fiction, entitled De Komeet (edited and partially written in collaboration with Vamba Sherif) is due out in February 2023, published by De Geus.
Since 2010 Martijn has been involved in the organisation of the largest writing competition for science fiction, fantasy and horror stories in the Low Countries: the Harland Awards (formerly known as the Paul Harland Prize), in later years acting as the co-ordinator for writing competitions at online readers’ community Hebban.nl, for which he also acts as an editor.
Together with Heidi van der Vloet and other people he helps organise the Middag van het Fantastische Boek (Afternoon of Fantastic Fiction) at the Utrecht City Library.
He has been giving workshops and classes on writing fantasy and scifi since 2013.This experience, combined with the huge pile of books he has read, prompted him to write a book on how to write fantasy and scifi (Hoe schrijf je fantasy en sciencefiction?) for publishers Atlas Contact. He did this together with his partner Debbie van der Zande, who as an editor and avid reader, brought her own experience to writing the book.
As a teacher of creative writing at the Dutch Writers’ Academy Martijn specialises in ‘Writing fantasy and science fiction’ and he teaches the subject ‘Other Worlds’ at ArteZ Creative Writing University.
Apart from being an author, editor and creative writing teacher, Martijn is also a legal expert and a Teakwon-do master (7th dan) with his own school in Groningen: Sung Zang.
Photograph: Riske de Vries