About Fred de Vries

Fred de Vries is a Dutch freelance writer/journalist, who has lived in Kenya, Uganda and Eritrea. In 2003 he moved to South Africa, where he was awarded a writing fellowship with WISER at Wits University to do research for a biography of South Africa’s only beat-poet Sinclair Beiles, who lived in the notorious Beat Hotel in Paris in de late 50s and worked with William Burroughs and Gregory Corso.

He has a regular interview column for The Weekender, writes for several Dutch publications, teaches travel writing at Wits and Creative Industries and had several of his travel and music stories published in Dutch collections.

In his previous life he worked as a correspondent and foreign editor for de Volkskrant daily newspaper in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Together with his colleague Toine Heijmans he wrote Respect! in 1998, a book about hiphop in Europe.

In 2006 he published Club Risiko, a close and personal look at the dark and fascinating underground culture of the eighties in seven cities (Jo’burg, Paris, Amsterdam, London, Berlin, Ljubljana, New York), focusing on the relationship between the city and the post-punk music scene . The book featured Sonic Youth, Crass, Laibach, Einstürzende Neubauten, the Ex, Leos Carax and the utterly obscure South African band Koos. Club Risiko was nominated for the prestigious Belgian award De Gouden Uil.

He recently published a collection with the highlights from his interviews for The Weekender and Empire Magazine. The Fred de Vries Interviews; From Abdullah to Zille contains 39 interviews with more and less famous creative South Africans. The list includes Fokofpolisiekar, Helen Zille, Steve Hofmeyr, Rian Malan, Japan and I, Anton Kannemeyer (Bitterkomix), Ivan Vladislavic, Marlene van Niekerk, Warren Siebrits and Chris Chameleon. One of the highlights is the disastrous 11.49 minutes interview with jazz giant Abdullah Ibrahim, a must read spread out over almost 2500 words.