Oscar van den Boogaard (1964) is a novelist and curator. He grew up in the Netherlands and Suriname and studied law and French language and literature in Montpellier, Amsterdam and Brussels. After a short time working at an international law firm, he chose to be a fulltime writer. Since his 1990 debut he has published many novels and plays which received international praise. In 1995 van den Boogaard founded Mot & van den Boogaard gallery together with Jan Mot in Brussels. He left the gallery in 2000 and since then occasionally works as a curator. On his left shoulder van den Boogaard has a tattoo GUILTY (in mirror writing), a work by artist Douglas Gordon. In 2002 the Guggenheim Museum in New York acquired a photograph of this tattoo. Since 2011 van den Boogaard is artistic director of the HISK in Ghent, Belgium.