User:Diagraph Literary Agency/Jay Conrad: singer-songwriter, instrumentalist

Jay Conrad: singer-songwriter, instrumentalist

Jay Conrad was born Geert R. A. Kliphuis in the Netherlands in 1955. His father (1923-2015) was the art therapist Maks Kliphuis, one of the driving forces behind the social-pedagogic training institute Middeloo (Amersfoort, Holland) and later head of the department of art therapy at the Jelgerma Kliniek of Leiden University. His mother, who passed away in 1964, was Nel Van der Velde, a drama teacher, radio presenter and author. Her poetry (Het Kleinere Werk) and short stories (Het Grotere Werk) were published posthumously in 2007 and 2008. During the Seventies and Eighties, Conrad wrote an extensive series of short travel stories for NRC Handelsblad, the newspaper based in Rotterdam. He applied the same format for his songs: short, concise observations with a tragicomical undercurrent. In 1992, the Belgian band Vaya Con Dios recorded his At The Parallel to critical acclaim. In the Nineties, Conrad, an accomplished guitarist, bass player and mandolinist, recorded two dozen of his songs on two albums: A Penniless Gentleman (BMG-Ariola, and Steeltown Girls (Arcade-CNR). In all, Conrad has written over 60 songs. These days, he writes novels under his real name, Geert Kliphuis. His novel about the Spanish Civil War,The Mirror City, the left panel of The Sombrayagua Diptych has been published in april 2012 by Alhambra Publishing. Other works awaiting publication are The Lens of Ibn Sahl (the right panel of aforementioned diptych), The Blessings of the Iron Moor, The Home Constellation, and the science-fiction novel The Jade Villa.