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.

Read The Unforeseen About Stella

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...

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.

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"Her writing has appeared in literary magazines across the United States, Canada, and England. In 1993 she won First Prize in the Bay Area Poetry Coalition."

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

March 25, 2026

Jazz Shows in Amsterdam

In the spring of 1975, my first husband, the African-American poet Lee Bridges, met Mr. Curiel, a former Minister of Economy in Surinam. Curiel had founded a charitable...

March 18, 2026

Synopsis of Facing the Music - a work in progress

Synopsis: Anique is a talented young singer from Holland, renowned for her performances across the country. When she receives an unexpected offer to sing in a nightclub on the...

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