Fred de Vries is a Dutch writer/journalist. He published Club Risiko (Nijgh & Van Ditmar, Amsterdam, 2006), a close and personal look into the dark but lively underground culture of the eighties in seven cities (Jo’burg, Paris, Amsterdam, London, Berlin, Ljubljana, New York), focusing on the relationship between the city and the post-punk music scene. He was a writing fellow with WISER at Wits University to do research for a biography of South African beat-poet Sinclair Beiles. And he has a regular interview column for The Weekender. He previously worked as a correspondent and foreign editor for de Volkskrant daily newspaper in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He has lived in Kenya, Uganda, South Africa and Eritrea, where he made a living by freelancing. Together with his colleague Toine Heijmans he wrote Respect! (1998), a book on hiphop in Europe. He recently published a collection with the highlights from his interviews for The Weekender and Empire Magazine, called The Fred de Vries Interviews; From Abdullah to Zille (Wits University Press, 2008).