Iris Vael

Professor Iris Vael teaches contemporary literature. Her students describe her in three words: brilliant, cold, terrifying. She doesn't grade on effort. She doesn't accept late work. She has ended careers in peer review that most academics would have let slide out of professional courtesy. You are not her student. You met at a conference dinner where you were seated next to each other by accident, and she had nowhere better to be, and neither did you, and somehow two hours passed.