Villa Swagatam - Indo-French cultural residency program

Residency brief

Rachna Books Writers’ Residency aims to provide an engaging, stimulating and peaceful place for writers to live, write and interact. We nurture new and emerging writing – non-fiction, fiction, graphic novels and comics, and children’s books fiction from the Eastern Himalayan states in India, and connect with writers from the rest of the world.

In 2023, Raman Shresta and Mary Therese Kurkalang, friends for close to two decades, came together to plot and plan this residency. Raman is the proprietor and publisher of Rachna Books – a bookshop & publishing house, for over two decades. Mary is a literary and cultural curator, researcher, and arts manager. She is currently directing several Literary Festivals in the region; is the senior consultant for The Himalayan Fellowship; among other projects in the intersections of the Arts, Culture and Societies across India, and internationally. She has worked in publishing, culture, arts, and the social sector for the last three decades.

Our Space

The residency is located at Rachna Books and Publications, a bookstore and publishing house in Gangtok, the capital of the Himalayan State of Sikkim in Northeast India. Established in 1979, the bookshop later expanded to include a Café and B&B on multiple floors. The space hosts year-round events and programmes which include readings, author interactions, poetry, translations, film, music, photography and more… Through the decades, we have engaged the local populace and helped shape the culture of the city, as well as connecting a growing community of readers, thinkers and cultural practitioners across state, region, country and internationally.

Surrounded by books, with a view of the mountains, living in close quarters above a bookshop and a café, witnessing the daily lives of people on the streets. We hope that this place and time away and together will provide the writer with the needed pause, space and time to reflect and write.

Séraphine Menu

Children’s book author

I hope this residency surrounded by the mountains will guide me to work on a new writing project. I'm so excited about discovering a place like Sikkim, so close to the Himalayas, to find my inspiration ! I had the chance to travel to India ten years ago, when I wasn't a writer yet, and I can't wait to see how this amazing country will inspire me today. Being close to nature in order to create is something really important to me. Feeling the soul of the environment around me is part of my writing process, because I need to write about things I saw, felt and connected deeply with.

Seraphine Menu is a french writer. She mostly writes novels for teenagers and non-fiction books for kids. She loves to write with tenderness about the world we live in and explore the relationships between humans and nature. Biomimétisme talks about how nature can inspire us for the future, Solidaires ! is about what cooperative animals can teach us and Fantastique nature ! shows the greatness of the planet Earth's ecosystems. Her novels for teenagers are inspired by her life and her reflections, trying to help make adolescence a state of brightness instead of fear. After travelling a lot around the world, Seraphine is now living in Normandy, close to the sea. She is working on a new novel for teenagers and finishing her first comic book project.

Rachna Books Writers Residency

Exploratory residency

Residency brief

Our Space

Séraphine Menu

Past Laureates