Hi, I am Dorien Hoeve. I was born in the northern and rural part of the Netherlands. I am the second of three children. My father was a dairy farmer and my mother a florist. They taught me the love for nature and living creatures, both animals and humans. Their home was always open for visitors: an extra guest for dinner, school trips, church meetings, parties and sleepovers were part of our daily life.
My mother’s family had an eye for the fine arts. It included a painter and many women with very good drawing skills. I used to adore my mother’s, but also my grandmother’s, drawings. My father, on the other hand, used to love my drawings, especially the drawing of me and my family that I made around the age of four (see picture). My mother taught me various forms of handicraft, ranging from floral arrangements to clay sculptures and from drawings to paper vases.
As a child, I loved to create. I wrote a puppet play and made my own puppets with a schoolfriend. Our primary school even let us perform our puppet show for the lowest grades. I also made multiple magazines, comics, and even a picture book with a cousin. With our business inherited mindset, we went to my cousins neighbors and had them pay to read our picture book. We used the earned money to duplicate our picture book and managed to make ten more of them.
As a teenager, I focused mainly on my school, sports and some church activities. The latter lead to an broadening of my creative horizon. With some church friends, I started a small band and drama group under supervision of my mother. We ended up playing in our local youth services and I recently learnt that the group continued to this day (with different members of course). I also started painting with acrylic paint. Around the age of sixteen, I painted the dove on which a friend immediately placed a bid. Although, I wasn’t selling at the time, I started selling my paintings in 2022. They can be found on my website www.newbold.nl.
When I was eighteen, I moved to study at Wageningen University. I received the Alpro Foundation Award (2011) for my master thesis and finished my studies soon thereafter. After my studies, I continued my career in research. I did my PhD training at Radboudumc, where my love for writing was reborn. I started to write texts and stories again. I took me, however, another decade to make writing a daily habit. I have a lot of ideas and (unfinished) writings, which I hope to publish someday.
I met my husband in Wageningen and we married in the summer of 2010. Together, we have four wonderful, creative and venturous children. I like to take them to the library every other week. Even though the youngest one already passed the recommended age for picture books, we still take them home with us and read them before bedtime.