Amarte Fonds

Wild

Jante Wortel

Jante Root received a contribution for her new collection of short stories called Wild. A question that plays a major role in her the collection of stories is how far the characters are willing to go for their own happiness, and the eye they turn for what consequences that has for those around them. In essence, they all want to achieve something, to make a difference by taking fate into their own hands. For example, a father tries to spare his daughter the suffering of a deceased parakeet by buying her a new one, a woman believes her husband has been reincarnated into a horse, and a marriage falls apart after a 4-year-old son starts shooting chickens with an air rifle and the father is unable to intervene.

Jante Root wanted to be a clown, but was told in the youth circus that she was too shy for that. She is a writer, bookseller and mentors students in the writing program at ArtEZ, where she herself graduated in 2017 with the novella When the Bird Flies Through the Glass. In the summer of 2022, her debut novel Weerlicht was published by Das Mag publishers, the story of a family traveling around Norway with their seriously ill daughter Lea. Prior to the publication of her debut novel, she participated in the Slow Writing Lab, won Write-Now Groningen 2016 and followed Wintertuin's development program.