Writers Famous Writers from Belgium

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List of famous writers from Belgium, listed alphabetically with photos when available. Belgium is home to many prolific writers, including those who write fiction, non-fiction, poetry, biographies and more. These are some of the best Belgian writers that have ever lived, so if you're a native of Belgium and an aspiring writer then use this list as inspiration to achieve your own writing goals.

The list you're viewing is made up of many different writers, like Jef Cassiers and Pierre Pestieau.

This list answers the questions, "Who are popular Belgian writers?" and "Which writers are from Belgium?"

You can click on the names of these renowned writers of Belgium in order to get more information about each one. Some of these historic writers may no longer be living in Belgium, but they're all of Belgium descent.

1

Peter Paul Rubens Died at 63 (1577-1640) Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish Baroque painter. A proponent of an extravagant Baroque style that emphasized movement, colour, and sensuality, Rubens is well known for his ...more

2

Georges Simenon Died at 86 (1903-1989) Georges Joseph Christian Simenon was a Belgian writer. A prolific author who published nearly 200 novels and numerous short works, Simenon is best known as the creator of the fictional detective ...more

3

Maurice Maeterlinck Died at 87 (1862-1949) Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who was a Fleming, but wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911 "in ...more

4

Jean-Claude Van Damme age 58 Jean-Claude Camille François Van Varenberg, professionally known as Jean-Claude Van Damme and abbreviated as JCVD, is a Belgian martial artist, actor, and director best known for his ...more

5

Django Reinhardt Died at 43 (1910-1953) Jean "Django" Reinhardt was a Belgium-born French guitarist and composer of Romani ethnicity. Reinhardt is regarded as one of the greatest guitar players of all time; he was the first ...more

6

Julio Cortázar Died at 70 (1914-1984) Julio Cortázar, born Jules Florencio Cortázar, was an Argentine novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, Cortázar ...more

7

Agnès Varda age 90 Agnès Varda is a French film director and professor at the European Graduate School. Her films, photographs, and art installations focus on documentary realism, feminist issues, and ...more

8

Hergé Died at 76 (1907-1983) Georges Prosper Remi, known by the pen name Hergé, was a Belgian cartoonist. He is best known for The Adventures of Tintin, the series of comic albums which are considered one of the most ...more

9

Patrick Bauchau age 80 Patrick Nicolas Jean Sixte Ghislain Bauchau is a Belgian actor best known for his role as Scarpine in the 1985 James Bond movie, A View to a Kill, Sydney in the TV series The Pretender and ...more

10

Chantal Akerman age 68 Chantal Anne Akerman is a Belgian film director, artist, and professor of film at the City College of New York. Her best-known film is Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. ...more

11

Jacques Brel Died at 49 (1929-1978) Jacques Romain Georges Brel was a Belgian singer-songwriter who composed and performed literate, thoughtful, and theatrical songs that generated a large, devoted following—initially in Belgium ...more

12

Hugo Claus Died at 79 (1929-2008) Hugo Maurice Julien Claus was a leading Belgian author who published under his own name as well as various pseudonyms. Claus' literary contributions spanned the genres of drama, the novel, and ...more

13

Henri Michaux Died at 85 (1899-1984) Henri Michaux was a highly idiosyncratic Belgian-born poet, writer, and painter who wrote in French. He later took French citizenship. Michaux is best known for his esoteric books written in a ...more

14

Benoît Poelvoorde age 54 Benoît Poelvoorde is a Belgian actor and comedian.

15

Yolande Moreau age 65 Yolande Moreau is a Belgian comedian, actress, film director and screenwriter.

16

Jean-Pierre Dardenne age 67 Jean-Pierre Dardenne is a film director, film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer and film editor.

17

May Sarton Died at 83 (1912-1995) May Sarton is the pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton, an American poet, novelist and memoirist.

18

Jeremy Brock age 59 Jeremy Brock is an English actor, producer, writer, fisher and director whose works include the screenplays Mrs. Brown, Driving Lessons, The Last King of Scotland, and Charlotte Gray. His awards ...more

19

Charles Binamé age 69 Charles Binamé is a Quebec director. He was born in Belgium and came to Montreal with his family at a young age. In 1971, he began work as an assistant director with the National Film ...more

20

Raoul Cauvin age 80 Raoul Cauvin is a Belgian comics author and one of the most popular in the humorist field.

21

Lucas Belvaux age 57 Lucas Belvaux is a Belgian actor and film director. His directing credits include the Trilogie, consisting of three films with interlocking stories and characters, each of which was filmed in a ...more

22

Bouli Lanners age 53 Philippe "Bouli" Lanners is a Belgian actor, author and film director. His film The Giants was nominated for twelve Magritte Awards, winning five, including Best Film and Best

23

Marion Hänsel age 69 Marion Hänsel is a Belgian film director, producer, actress and screenwriter. Her film Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea was entered into the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.

24

Jaco Van Dormael age 61 Jaco Van Dormael is a Belgian film director, screenwriter and playwright. His complex and critically acclaimed films are especially noted for their respectful and sympathetic portrayal of people ...more

25

Danis Tanović age 49 Danis Tanović is a Bosnian film director and screenwriter. Tanović is best known for having directed and written the script for the 2001 Bosnian movie No Man's Land which won him the Academy ...more

26

Wim Mertens age 65 Wim Mertens is a Flemish Belgian composer, countertenor vocalist, pianist, guitarist, and musicologist.

27

Jacques Feyder Died at 63 (1885-1948) Jacques Feyder was a Belgian actor, screenwriter and film director who worked principally in France, but also in the USA, Britain and Germany. He was a leading director of silent films during ...more

28

Amélie Nothomb age 51 Amélie Nothomb is a Belgian writer who writes in French.

29

Eric de Kuyper age 76 Eric de Kuyper is a Flemish-Belgian and Dutch writer, semiologist, art critic, and experimental film director. Fictionalized autobiographical novels, written in the 3rd-person, account for most ...more

30

Béatrix Beck Died at 94 (1914-2008) Béatrix Beck was a French writer of Belgian origin. She was born at Villars-sur-Ollon, Switzerland, the daughter of the poet Christian Beck. After several jobs, she became the secretary ...more

31

André Delvaux Died at 76 (1926-2002) André, Baron Delvaux was a Belgian film director and widely regarded as the founder of the Belgian national cinema. Born in Heverlee, he died in Valencia, Spain. He received the Magritte ...more

32

Nicolas Provost age 49 Nicolas Provost is a Belgian filmmaker and visual artist who lives and works in New York and Brussels. His works are in a number of collections, including The New Art Gallery Walsall and ...more

33

Philippe Blasband age 54 Philippe Blasband is a filmmaker and a writer in French language from Belgium. He lives currently in Brussels. Among other well-known films, Philippe Blasband directed the movie ...more

34

Edward Schillebeeckx Died at 95 (1914-2009) Edward Cornelis Florentius Alfonsus Schillebeeckx was a Belgian Roman Catholic theologian born in Antwerp. He taught at the Catholic University in Nijmegen. He was a member of the Dominican ...more

35

Ilya Prigogine Died at 86 (1917-2003) Viscount Ilya Romanovich Prigogine was a Belgian physical chemist and Nobel Laureate noted for his work on dissipative structures, complex systems, and irreversibility.

36

Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt age 58 Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt is a French and Belgian dramatist, novelist, fiction writer and film director. His plays have been staged in over fifty countries all over the world.

37

Vincent Tavier age 56 Vincent Tavier is a film producer, screenwriter, actor and film director.

38

Simon Stevin Died at 72 (1548-1620) Simon Stevin was a Flemish mathematician, physicist and military engineer. He was active in a great many areas of science and engineering, both theoretical and practical. He also translated ...more

39

Alain Berliner age 55 Alain Berliner is a Belgian director best known for the 1997 film Ma vie en rose, which won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 55th Golden Globe Awards in 1998. Ma vie ...more

40

André Franquin Died at 73 (1924-1997) André Franquin was an influential Belgian comics artist, whose best known comic strip creations are Gaston and Marsupilami, created while he worked on the Spirou et Fantasio comic strip ...more

41

Dominique Deruddere age 61 Dominique Deruddere is a Belgian film director.

42

Carl Colpaert age 55 Carl Colpaert is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and the founder of Cineville, a production and distribution company based in Los Angeles.

43

Joachim Lafosse age 43 Joachim Lafosse is a Belgian film director and screenwriter.

44

Charles Spaak Died at 72 (1903-1975) Charles Spaak was a Belgian screenwriter who was noted particularly for his work in the French cinema during the 1930s. He was the son of the dramatist and poet Paul Spaak, the brother of the ...more

45

Hilde Van Mieghem age 60 Hilde Van Mieghem is an actress.

46

René Magritte Died at 69 (1898-1967) René François Ghislain Magritte was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images that fall under the umbrella of surrealism. ...more

47

Henri Storck Died at 92 (1907-1999) Henri Storck was a Belgian author, filmmaker and documentarist. In 1933, he directed, with Joris Ivens, Misère au Borinage, a film about the miners in the Borinage area. In 1938, with ...more

48

Claude Lévi-Strauss Died at 101 (1908-2009) Claude Lévi-Strauss was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theory of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the Chair of ...more

49

Benoît Mariage age 57 Benoît Mariage is a Belgian film director.

50

Ben Stassen Ben Stassen is a Belgian film director, producer and screenwriter. He founded nWave Pictures in 1994, producing highly successful CGI ride films including the groundbreaking Devils Mine. ...more

1 Peter Paul Rubens Died at 63 (1577-1640) Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish Baroque painter. A proponent of an extravagant Baroque style that emphasized movement, colour, and sensuality, Rubens is well known for his ...more

2 Georges Simenon Died at 86 (1903-1989) Georges Joseph Christian Simenon was a Belgian writer. A prolific author who published nearly 200 novels and numerous short works, Simenon is best known as the creator of the fictional detective ...more

3 Maurice Maeterlinck Died at 87 (1862-1949) Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who was a Fleming, but wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911 "in ...more

4 Jean-Claude Van Damme age 58 Jean-Claude Camille François Van Varenberg, professionally known as Jean-Claude Van Damme and abbreviated as JCVD, is a Belgian martial artist, actor, and director best known for his ...more

5 Django Reinhardt Died at 43 (1910-1953) Jean "Django" Reinhardt was a Belgium-born French guitarist and composer of Romani ethnicity. Reinhardt is regarded as one of the greatest guitar players of all time; he was the first ...more

6 Julio Cortázar Died at 70 (1914-1984) Julio Cortázar, born Jules Florencio Cortázar, was an Argentine novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, Cortázar ...more

7 Agnès Varda age 90 Agnès Varda is a French film director and professor at the European Graduate School. Her films, photographs, and art installations focus on documentary realism, feminist issues, and ...more

8 Hergé Died at 76 (1907-1983) Georges Prosper Remi, known by the pen name Hergé, was a Belgian cartoonist. He is best known for The Adventures of Tintin, the series of comic albums which are considered one of the most ...more

9 Patrick Bauchau age 80 Patrick Nicolas Jean Sixte Ghislain Bauchau is a Belgian actor best known for his role as Scarpine in the 1985 James Bond movie, A View to a Kill, Sydney in the TV series The Pretender and ...more

10 Chantal Akerman age 68 Chantal Anne Akerman is a Belgian film director, artist, and professor of film at the City College of New York. Her best-known film is Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. ...more

11 Jacques Brel Died at 49 (1929-1978) Jacques Romain Georges Brel was a Belgian singer-songwriter who composed and performed literate, thoughtful, and theatrical songs that generated a large, devoted following—initially in Belgium ...more

12 Hugo Claus Died at 79 (1929-2008) Hugo Maurice Julien Claus was a leading Belgian author who published under his own name as well as various pseudonyms. Claus' literary contributions spanned the genres of drama, the novel, and ...more

13 Henri Michaux Died at 85 (1899-1984) Henri Michaux was a highly idiosyncratic Belgian-born poet, writer, and painter who wrote in French. He later took French citizenship. Michaux is best known for his esoteric books written in a ...more

14 Benoît Poelvoorde age 54 Benoît Poelvoorde is a Belgian actor and comedian.

15 Yolande Moreau age 65 Yolande Moreau is a Belgian comedian, actress, film director and screenwriter.

16 Jean-Pierre Dardenne age 67 Jean-Pierre Dardenne is a film director, film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer and film editor.

17 May Sarton Died at 83 (1912-1995) May Sarton is the pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton, an American poet, novelist and memoirist.

18 Jeremy Brock age 59 Jeremy Brock is an English actor, producer, writer, fisher and director whose works include the screenplays Mrs. Brown, Driving Lessons, The Last King of Scotland, and Charlotte Gray. His awards ...more

19 Charles Binamé age 69 Charles Binamé is a Quebec director. He was born in Belgium and came to Montreal with his family at a young age. In 1971, he began work as an assistant director with the National Film ...more

20 Raoul Cauvin age 80 Raoul Cauvin is a Belgian comics author and one of the most popular in the humorist field.

21 Lucas Belvaux age 57 Lucas Belvaux is a Belgian actor and film director. His directing credits include the Trilogie, consisting of three films with interlocking stories and characters, each of which was filmed in a ...more

22 Bouli Lanners age 53 Philippe "Bouli" Lanners is a Belgian actor, author and film director. His film The Giants was nominated for twelve Magritte Awards, winning five, including Best Film and Best

23 Marion Hänsel age 69 Marion Hänsel is a Belgian film director, producer, actress and screenwriter. Her film Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea was entered into the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.

24 Jaco Van Dormael age 61 Jaco Van Dormael is a Belgian film director, screenwriter and playwright. His complex and critically acclaimed films are especially noted for their respectful and sympathetic portrayal of people ...more

25 Danis Tanović age 49 Danis Tanović is a Bosnian film director and screenwriter. Tanović is best known for having directed and written the script for the 2001 Bosnian movie No Man's Land which won him the Academy ...more

26 Wim Mertens age 65 Wim Mertens is a Flemish Belgian composer, countertenor vocalist, pianist, guitarist, and musicologist.

27 Jacques Feyder Died at 63 (1885-1948) Jacques Feyder was a Belgian actor, screenwriter and film director who worked principally in France, but also in the USA, Britain and Germany. He was a leading director of silent films during ...more

28 Amélie Nothomb age 51 Amélie Nothomb is a Belgian writer who writes in French.

29 Eric de Kuyper age 76 Eric de Kuyper is a Flemish-Belgian and Dutch writer, semiologist, art critic, and experimental film director. Fictionalized autobiographical novels, written in the 3rd-person, account for most ...more

30 Béatrix Beck Died at 94 (1914-2008) Béatrix Beck was a French writer of Belgian origin. She was born at Villars-sur-Ollon, Switzerland, the daughter of the poet Christian Beck. After several jobs, she became the secretary ...more

31 André Delvaux Died at 76 (1926-2002) André, Baron Delvaux was a Belgian film director and widely regarded as the founder of the Belgian national cinema. Born in Heverlee, he died in Valencia, Spain. He received the Magritte ...more

32 Nicolas Provost age 49 Nicolas Provost is a Belgian filmmaker and visual artist who lives and works in New York and Brussels. His works are in a number of collections, including The New Art Gallery Walsall and ...more

33 Philippe Blasband age 54 Philippe Blasband is a filmmaker and a writer in French language from Belgium. He lives currently in Brussels. Among other well-known films, Philippe Blasband directed the movie ...more

34 Edward Schillebeeckx Died at 95 (1914-2009) Edward Cornelis Florentius Alfonsus Schillebeeckx was a Belgian Roman Catholic theologian born in Antwerp. He taught at the Catholic University in Nijmegen. He was a member of the Dominican ...more

35 Ilya Prigogine Died at 86 (1917-2003) Viscount Ilya Romanovich Prigogine was a Belgian physical chemist and Nobel Laureate noted for his work on dissipative structures, complex systems, and irreversibility.

36 Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt age 58 Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt is a French and Belgian dramatist, novelist, fiction writer and film director. His plays have been staged in over fifty countries all over the world.

37 Vincent Tavier age 56 Vincent Tavier is a film producer, screenwriter, actor and film director.

38 Simon Stevin Died at 72 (1548-1620) Simon Stevin was a Flemish mathematician, physicist and military engineer. He was active in a great many areas of science and engineering, both theoretical and practical. He also translated ...more

39 Alain Berliner age 55 Alain Berliner is a Belgian director best known for the 1997 film Ma vie en rose, which won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 55th Golden Globe Awards in 1998. Ma vie ...more

40 André Franquin Died at 73 (1924-1997) André Franquin was an influential Belgian comics artist, whose best known comic strip creations are Gaston and Marsupilami, created while he worked on the Spirou et Fantasio comic strip ...more

41 Dominique Deruddere age 61 Dominique Deruddere is a Belgian film director.

42 Carl Colpaert age 55 Carl Colpaert is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and the founder of Cineville, a production and distribution company based in Los Angeles.

43 Joachim Lafosse age 43 Joachim Lafosse is a Belgian film director and screenwriter.

44 Charles Spaak Died at 72 (1903-1975) Charles Spaak was a Belgian screenwriter who was noted particularly for his work in the French cinema during the 1930s. He was the son of the dramatist and poet Paul Spaak, the brother of the ...more

45 Hilde Van Mieghem age 60 Hilde Van Mieghem is an actress.

46 René Magritte Died at 69 (1898-1967) René François Ghislain Magritte was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images that fall under the umbrella of surrealism. ...more

47 Henri Storck Died at 92 (1907-1999) Henri Storck was a Belgian author, filmmaker and documentarist. In 1933, he directed, with Joris Ivens, Misère au Borinage, a film about the miners in the Borinage area. In 1938, with ...more

48 Claude Lévi-Strauss Died at 101 (1908-2009) Claude Lévi-Strauss was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theory of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the Chair of ...more

49 Benoît Mariage age 57 Benoît Mariage is a Belgian film director.

50 Ben Stassen Ben Stassen is a Belgian film director, producer and screenwriter. He founded nWave Pictures in 1994, producing highly successful CGI ride films including the groundbreaking Devils Mine. ...more