Yael van der Wouden

twitter: @yaelwouden

Yael van der Wouden is a writer and not Sir David Attenborough, but then again who is? Is even David himself truly David? At any rate, she comes pretty close. Yael has appeared in places such as Moonchild Magazine, Cheap Pop Lit, The Sun Magazine, Barrelhouse Magazine, Split Lip Magazine and her friends’ work parties where she pretends to be Brenda from accounting. Once in a while she answers questions for Longleaf Review in her advice column, Dear David. Her essay, On (Not) Reading Anne Frank has been listed as a notable in Best American Essays 2018 and work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize. Unsupervised she usually ends up writing either sad fairytale fanfictions or lists that kinda look like stories. On more sober days her fiction reflects on Jewishness, ghosts, and mothers – separately or together.

When she isn’t writing she dances. No joke! She was that kid who started dancing ballet at 3 but had just a little bit too much energy to really nail her pas de bourees. At 7 she performed at her school’s Hanukkah talent show with a 10-minute interpretational dance of a candle flame. Her parents still insist that everyone was very impressed. Some of her favorite writers are Carmen Maria Machado, Kelly Link, and E. M. Forster. She’s currently reading Alan Hollinghurst’s The Sparsholt Affair and Miranda July’s short story collection, No One Belongs Here More Than You.

At the moment she’s working on a collection of short stories about monstrous girls. One of these stories, A Family of Girls (aka the zombie shtetl tale) can be found at Déraciné Magazine. Her latest short story, Forgiven, can be read over at The Offing. You can subscribe to her tiny stories tinyletter. The Dear David inbox is currently very open for submissions – so please do send her your burning questions, but also your cooling or room-temperature ones. She’s looking forward to hearing from you!

website: yaelvanderwouden.com