Creative Migrations

27th Annual Literary Festival
Old Dominion University
4-8 October 2004

RON HEYNNEMAN

Ron Heynneman was born in Surabaya (Java), and raised in Makassar (Celebes, now Sulawesi). In 1942, the Japanese invaded the Netherlands East Indies and interned the family. At the Kampili internment camp, Ron met Jeanne-Marie van Diejen-Roemen, the heroine of his first book Ibu Maluku (Mother of the Moluccas), the remarkable story of the Mother Teresa of the famed Spice Islands of the East. Three and a half years later Australian troops liberated him, and the reunited family left for the Netherlands to recover. After engineering training in the Netherlands and Sweden, he emigrated to Canada in 1953, and moved to Chicago in 1959. In 1968 he returned to Toronto, where became a registered professional engineer. In 1972, he married Mireille Desjarlais from Montreal, a social worker by training, now a full-time writer. They live in Toronto. [extracted from 2004 brochure]

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