Ilse Josepha Lazaroms (she her hers) is a bilingual writer based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She is the author of Duet (Cossee 2021, translated into German by Janine Malz for KLAK Verlag 2024) and Elders (Atlas Contact 2024). Her next book, Oker, will appear in October 2025 with Uitgeverij Oevers.

She is the recipient of a Tin House nonfiction fellowship for single parents and a scholarship for The Unexpected Shape Community with Esmé Weijun Wang. She was a runner up for the Lighthouse Lit Fest 2020 nonfiction fellowship with Hanif Abdurraqib. She writes about literature in translation for De Groene Amsterdammer and the Dutch Review of Books.

Ilse holds an MA in Gender studies from Utrecht University and a PhD in Jewish studies from the European University Institute in Florence. She has held fellowships at Harvard University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Center for Jewish History in New York, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Budapest. Currently, she is a commissioning editor at Amsterdam University Press, where she publishes books in the critical humanities.

Her academic work – at the intersection of feminist and queer studies, literary studies, and Jewish studies – has been published internationally. In 2015, her book The Grace of Misery. Joseph Roth and the Politics of Exile, 1918–1939, about the life of the Jewish writer and journalist Joseph Roth, was awarded the Victor Adler State Prize from the Austrian Ministry of Science and Education.

Born and raised in the Netherlands, Ilse has lived in Oslo, London, New York, Budapest, Berlin, Jerusalem, Florence, and Cambridge (Massachusetts), and currently lives in Amsterdam with her daughter. Find Ilse at @ilsejosepha on Bluesky.

Her creative work has been supported by the Dutch Foundation for Literature, Auteursbond, Amarte Fonds, Tin House, Lighthouse Writers Workshop and the Unexpected Shape Community.