Kristien Hemmerechts - Life

Life

Kristien Hemmerechts studied Germanic philology at the Katholieke Universiteit Brussel (KUB) and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL). Afterwards, she studied literary science in Amsterdam for a year. In Amsterdam she met her first husband—who was British—with whom she married in 1978. They moved out to London where Hemmerechts worked as a typist. In 1979 they were in charge of a youth hostel in Dover. After a half year, they left Dover and they started traveling in South America for another half year. When they returned, they settled in Brussels where Hemmerechts took upon a mandate at the KUB as an instructor of English.

In 1981 Hemmerechts gave birth to a daughter, named Katherine. Two sons followed shortly after that, but both boys died from Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

In 1986 she was granted a PhD for her dissertation A Plausible Story and a Plausible Way of Telling It: A structuralist analysis of Jean Rhys's novels.

In 1987 she divorced her husband. A year later she met the Flemish writer and poet Herman de Coninck with whom she lived in Berchem, Antwerp. In 1992 they got married. Five years later, in 1997, Herman de Coninck died from a heart failure in Lisbon, Portugal. Hemmerechts reported about this loss in the biographical Taal Zonder Mij (1998) which also contains some analyses of de Coninck's poetry.

In 2007, Kristien Hemmerechts married Bart Castelein, with whom she has had a relationship since 1999. Until this day they haven't lived together, deciding for separate homes.

Hemmerechts currently is a professor in English literature at the Katholieke Universiteit Brussel (KUB), and an instructor of Creative Writing at the Herman Teirlinck Instituut in Antwerp.