Annelies Van Parys was born on 5 June 1975 in Bruges and took her first steps in the music world at the age of ten. At the conservatory in Bruges, she studied piano with Thérèse T’Sjoen, who would instil in her a love and interest for new music, and chamber music with the tuba player Wim Belaen. In 1993 she continued her studies at the conservatory in Ghent where she specialised in piano with Johan Duijck (and harp as second instrument with Arielle Valibouse) and composition with Jan Rispens, Octaaf Van Geert, Godfried-Willem Raes and after 1998 with Luc Brewaeys. In 1998 she received her meestergraad for piano and in 1999 for composition. She then pursued advanced studies in composition with Brewaeys. In 2001 Van Parys was one of a select company of ten composers invited to the international composition seminar given by the Ictus ensemble in Brussels, where her bass clarinet solo was performed by Harry Sparnaay and where she had lessons from Thierry Demey and Jonathan Harvey. In April 2001 she was a guest at the Link Festival in the Netherlands, where Brewaeys was the focus for three days, and where two of her compositions, Parole (2000) and 5 Short Stories (2001) were premiered. In that same year, Van Parys received the Flanders/Québec prize for contemporary music for the piece PhrasesV performed for the occasion on 15 May 2002 in Montréal by the ensemble of the Société de Musique Contemporaine de Québec (SMCQ) under Walter Boudreau. Also in 2002 she wrote the composition Lux for the Flemish Radio Choir, which was broadcast live on 22 December in fifteen European countries. The composer is currently working at the conservatory in Bruges and teaching piano at the Artevelde Hogeschool in Ghent.