Ester Naomi Perquin is a prize-winning Dutch poet and author of several poetry collections. She is the Poet Laureate for the Netherlands. She put herself through creative writing school by working as a prison guard for four years and draws on this experience often in her work. Perquin published her first collection of poetry Napkins at Half-Mast (2007) at the age of twenty-seven and has published two more collections since: In the Name of the other (2009) and Cell Inspections (2012). Her fourth collection Multiple Absence will be published this year. She won the Netherlands' most prestigious prize for a single collection, the VSB Poetry Prize, for Cell Inspections. Besides poetry, Perquin writes essays, short stories, columns and articles for newspapers and magazines, gives workshops and masterclasses, and co-hosts a national arts and culture radio show. She was also the appointed city poet for Rotterdam - a position she held for two years.