Breaking away from my everyday life usually sharpens my spirit: I feel more acuity and sensibility to what is happening, I am much more focused and able to follow my own discipline, even if the new place arouses my curiosity. The house, the landscape and the people, as intriguing as they can be, make me form new layouts ideas between the world and me, and new relationships between the words themselves.

Antoine Mouton, born in Feurs in 1981, is a French novelist and poet. The son of a schoolteacher and a blacksmith, he grew up relocating frequently due to factory closures. Since 2004, he has published ten books with various publishers, including La Dragonne, La Contre-Allée, and Christian Bourgois. His latest work, HKZ, le livre du revenir, was recently published by Ypsilon. Antoine is also involved in performance art, working with the Jeanne Simone company to create public space performances, and often gives readings of his own texts, sometimes alongside musician Mathilde Braure. His first book, Au nord tes parents, won the Prix des Apprentis et Lycéens of the PACA region. During his residency at the Himalayan Writer’s Retreat, Antoine worked on a story about two people who get up every night to photograph the mountains. He has made significant progress with the same, during and after the residency. Antoine participated in some of the workshops offered as part of the Himalayan Emerging Writers Residency -, interacting with writers from India and South Asia and exploring new approaches to writing. He also delved into translation, sharing the first translated pages of Au nord tes parents with fellow residents.