Nicolaas (Cola) Debrot (4 May 1902 – 3 December 1981) was a writer, lawyer, medical doctor and politician.

He went to secondary school, and later to Utrecht University in the Netherlands, studying law and later medicine, where he also started his literary career.

In the late 1940s, he returned to the Antilles and lived on Curaçao, where he established the foundations of Dutch-Antillian literature.

[4] In 2008, the Werkgroep Caraïbische Letteren, an independent group within the Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde, which aims to promote and assist Caribbean literature, initiated the annual Cola Debrot lectures in Amsterdam.

[5] The first lecture was given by the Nobel Prize winning author Derek Walcott.