Patrick Bernauw

Patrick Bernauw (b. 1962, Erembodegem) tells stories … as a writer, screenwriter, director and performer. Since his debut in 1981, he has built up a versatile oeuvre with novels, essays, poetry, plays and radio and television scripts. He was active as a radio play director, editor-in-chief of Historische Verhalen and now, with his non-profit organization De Scriptomanen, runs a digital publishing and production house for audiobooks, among other things.

He also taught the creative writing course at the Academy of Performing Arts in Aalst and the Mechelen Conservatory until the summer of 2025.

His prose often explores the boundary between fact and imagination. In historical faction-thrillers like Mysteries of the Lamb of God, The Blood of the Lamb or The Illuminati Conspiracy, he weaves Flemish history and mystery into magical-realist narratives. His juvenile novels, such as In het Teken van de Ram (with Guy Didelez), have also won awards and been translated into several languages.

As a playwright and performer, Bernauw has worked for television ( Wittekerke, Sedes & Belli, among others), for professional theater and with his musical theater company Compagnie de Ballade, with which he won the Visser Neerlandia Prize for Musical in 2005. Today he focuses on podcasts and audiobooks around true crime and mystery, and shows another side of his writing on Instagram with blackout poetry and text collages.

At www.dirkvanbabylon.com, he will focus primarily on marker poems, his synchronicities and magical realism – something that is a common thread throughout his authorship – and his readings.