About publishing house Orlando

Dutch publishing house Orlando started almost 10 years ago as an imprint of AW Bruna Publishers for translated upmarket & literary fiction. Founder Jacqueline Smit bought the imprint and since 2017 Uitgeverij Orlando bv is an independent publishing house. From 2018 till 2025 Ingrid Meurs was co-owner and co-publisher. Both Jacqueline and Ingrid have more than 25 years of experience in publishing and have been rebuilding the list, publishing literary fiction and non-fiction titles by female authors, both fiction and non-fiction, around 16 titles a year.

We aim to bring the best stories from around the world to readers of Dutch, so that means around 80% of our books are translations. We are building our Dutch list with fiction and non-fiction by Josha zwaan, Rinske Bouwman, Racheda Kooijman, Liddie Austin, Manon Duintjer, Sarah Domogala and Lisette Kreischer

We celebrate world literature with the likes of Maryse Condé (Guadeloupe), Claudia Schreiber (Germany), Linda Olsson (Sweden), Ayesha Arruna Attah (Ghana), Jo Kyung-ran (Korea); we learn from history with historical novels by Diane Setterfield, Tracy Chevalier and Madeline Miller; we explore modern American and English life with authors as Esther Freud, Sarah Moss, Alice Hoffman, Suzanne Clarke and Sarah Winman and we reach out to young readers with Instagram poet Rupi Kaur.

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We also publish a series of novels about women in the arts, so novelisations about the lives of Frida Kahlo, Hilma af Klint, Peggy Guggenheim or Simone de Beauvoir for example.

Our non-fiction is very diverse, from a book about modern witchcraft to culinairy memoirs and inspirational travel stories (like Mia Kankimaki – The women I think about at night).

From literary and historical fiction to poetry, Orlando is the home of international literature by women at its best.

We are most well known for our (modern) literary classics list, which started with the novel Orlando by Virginia Woolf and this one was followed with novels by Jean Rhys, Simone de Beauvoir, Marlen Haushofer, Angela Carter, Jacqueline Harpman, Kay Dick, Sigrid Undset, Doris Lessing, Carmen Laforet and Leonora Carrington.

For information about our list or Dutch authors, please contact me at the email adress below.