For Wytske Versteeg, writing is an act of looking. She pays close attention to stories and characters already lingering in daily experience, waiting to be told, and brings them to life with rich and beautiful language. But her writing does not flirt with pleasantries for the sake of it: Wytske is a blazing writer who conjures a story for the story first, reader second. Her works paint striking pictures of the worlds she describes, yet she bathes scenes in a certain softness. Take ‘Closed Home,’ for example, which Wytske wrote for Extra Extra no. 19. In quietly bare surroundings, the tempting sight of soft skin or the scent of the body of another are transformative, and the wistful longing of an unexpected visitor carries us tenderly from past to present.