Born on the seventh day of the seventh month of the year nineteen hundred seventy Jakobien (Jackie) Huisman is only one year old when her parents decide to leave the city of Delft and move to a small village in Drenthe, in the north of The Netherlands.

After she finishes secondary school  she travels as an exchange student to the United States, where she spends one year in Marion, Indiana. In 1989 she returns to her home country to study translation and interpreting at the Academy for Translation in Maastricht (www.vacmaastricht.nl). Sworn in, but not yet tired of studying, she decides to continue her education in the Belgian city of Antwerp, where she takes up an extended year program at the Lessius Academy to obtain a Master’s Degree in English consecutive interpreting (www.lessius-ho.be) That same year she gets the opportunity to start a job at Flair, a Flemish/Dutch magazine for young women. She works as an editor for six years before she decides to start writing on a freelance base for several Dutch and Flemish magazines and newspapers.

The last few years she focuses on travel stories and photography.

In 2007 she takes a sabbatical and travels together with her partner Alain Grootaers and their nine year old daughter Julia to Asia where they stay for one year and visit nine countries. After they return to Belgium they publish a book about their travel experiences (Sabbatical - een jaar van de wereld, uitgeverij Vrijdag, 2008).

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