A Conversation with Pia de Jong

This special Friends Event will feature the novelist and columnist Pia de Jong, who will be reading from her most recent work and discussing her life as a writer in the United States. Since moving to Princeton with her family in 2012, Pia de Jong has written a popular weekly column for the leading Amsterdam daily newspaper, NRC Handelsblad, about her life in the U.S. In the literary tradition of European writers visiting America that includes Alexis de Tocqueville, Isabella Bird, and Alistair Cooke, Pia writes with warmth and insight about the people she encounters and the lessons she has learned. This past summer, the Dutch publisher Prometheus issued a compilation of more than 100 of her columns under the title Flessenpost (Notes in a Bottle). Now, a selection of her columns, translated into English, has also been published, along with selections from her fiction work and other articles. Pia made the literary debut of the year in 2008 with her first novel, Lange dagen (Long days), which won the Flemish Golden Owl readers award and was shortlisted for several other prizes. It was translated into Italian as Verso Nord in 2009. Her second novel, Dieptevrees (Fear of depth), was published in 2010 to widespread acclaim. She has published two books for children and has won many awards for her short stories. From 2010 to 2012, she wrote a weekly column for the Dutch Financial Times. Copies of Pia’s publications, in both Dutch and English, will be available at the talk. Landon Jones, Friend of the Institute and former Managing Editor of People, will moderate the conversation with Pia, who will read from her work.