May 9, 2026
It was not a First of April joke
April 1, 1962 For the first time in my life I have been really, really sad. It is the biggest sorrow I have ever had. I am a little better now, but it still shocked me very...
Read more →Amsterdam · Fiction · Poetry
Stella
Jansen
Novelist · Poet · Storyteller
An Amsterdam-based novelist whose debut novel The Unforeseen traces the lives of three women across two continents and several decades — a story of adversity, windfall, and the grace of unexpected closure.
Featured Novel
The Unforeseen
A novel
This is the story of three women who have to deal with life in all its facets, adversities as well as windfalls and happiness whereby complications and unforeseen events shape their destiny in varying ways.Though faced with difficult situations these women cope in their own specific way with whatever life throws at...
About the Author
Stella Jansen
Stella Jansen is an Amsterdam-based novelist and poet whose debut novel The Unforeseen was published in 2022. Her second novel, Facing the Music, is forthcoming.
Forthcoming
Facing the Music
A novel set on the island of Cyprus in the aftermath of the Turkish invasion, drawing on Stella's own remarkable experiences there.
From the Journal
Latest Thoughts
May 4, 2026
Ghosts, Hearsay and Belly Laughs
“I hear the drums going every night.” Jetta — white-haired, nearly forty, Danish, and teetering on the edge of anorexia — sits down beside her two friends. Lena, a Finnish...
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