meet the author: kate zambreno
Maggie Nelson, Rebecca Solnit, Annie Ernaux, Claire-Louise Bennett, Olga Ravn: an international list of thinkers and writers among whom Kate Zambreno undoubtedly belongs. In Belgium and the Netherlands, too, a lot of authors hold Zambreno in high esteem, and Julie Cafmeyer is one of them. She will be talking to Kate Zambreno at the Passa Porta Bookshop.
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innovator
Essay, fiction, diary, manifesto, autobiography, literary history: Kate Zambreno’s books cannot be reduced to a single genre. The French Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux has said in this regard: ‘Kate Zambreno has invented a new form. It is a kind of absolute present, real life captured in close-up.’ For Caro Van Thuyne, Zambreno’s books served as a shining example while she was writing her impressive novel Bloedzang, and many other writers from Belgium and abroad cite the American author as a major influence.
heroines
Kate Zambreno themselves would probably not call themselves a heroine, but they certainly honoured their own Heroines in a unique way in the book of the same name. In an original way, they connected figures such as Zelda Fitzgerald, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Chantal Akerman, Jean Rhys, Vivien Eliot and a handful of other writers and artists in a web-like tribute in which readers can happily lose themselves. The book grew out of the blog Frances Farmer Is My Sister, which an online community quickly gathered around to develop an alternative canon, averse to the patriarchal view of artistry.
drifts
In late 2025, Dutch publishing house Koppernik released Heldinnen, a translation by Nicolette Hoekmeijer of Heroines. Hoekmeijer had previously also translated Zambreno’s novel Drifts as Drang, a novel about artistic ambition, personal crisis and the possibilities and shortcomings of literature, in which a writer loses herself in other artists, photography and real life.
Kate Zambreno will be travelling from their home in New York for a conversation with Julie Cafmeyer about their life and work. A day later, on 21 May, she will present a performance at the KMSKA centred on a work by Louise Bourgeois on display there.
about the author
Kate Zambreno is the author of several widely acclaimed books, including Screen Tests, Heroines and Green Girl. Their work has appeared in Granta, The Paris Review and The Virginia Quarterly Review, among others. They are the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and teach at Columbia University.
about the moderator
Julie Cafmeyer graduated as a director from the Toneelacademie Maastricht in 2015. Since then, she has established herself as a distinctive and high-profile maker and feminist voice in the cultural landscape. Her work possesses an autobiographical style and is characterized by wry humour, dark lightness and entertaining tragedy. Julie shares her questions, problems, failures, ambitions and dreams with the reader. She is currently working on her novel Belgiëlei 109, in which she charts the life of a woman living in a block of flats.
Soon at Passa Porta
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