Vagamon Writers Residency

Exploratory Residency

Residency brief

The Vagamon Writers Residency is run by DC Books, one of the top ten literary publishers of India, who has played a crucial role in inculcating reading and providing opportunities to budding writers through the DC Kizhakemuri Foundation (DCKF). The residency starts with the resident’s participation in the Kerala Literature Festival, a four-day festival that gathers 600,000 visitors on the beaches of Kozhikode and welcomes writers from all over the world. The resident is then taken to Vagamon, a hill station situated about 250km south.

The residency is situated within the DCSMAT Campus, a liberal arts college run by DCKF. It is a perfect environment for a writer willing to pursue their writing in solitude in a quiet and picture-perfect setting. During his stay, the selected resident will participate in the Mathrubhumi Festival of Letters in the state capital of Trivandrum and interact with the students of the Alliance française Kochi and Trivandrum. Interactions on the campus will be organized by the faculty in the form of talks, writing workshops or free discussions supervised by the librarian. The Vagamon Writers Residency is a solitary retreat, set in a rural setting, with nature as the main source of entertainment.

  • Thematic focus Literature
  • LocationVagamon (Kerala)
  • Dates 22nd January - March 2026
  • Length of stay 4 to 6 weeks

Our Space

Kerala, a slice of tropical paradise has attracted trade, religion, and cultures from all over the world. Its prolific coastlines, languid backwaters, exuberant tea gardens, and the smell of fresh-grown spices wafting in the air create a sense of belongingness for all those who seek. Vagamon is a hill station neatly tucked in between three hills called Thangal, Murugan, and Kurisumala. It served as a major educational hub as well as an early source of dairy farms started by Scottish missionaries.

Nestled among beautiful rolling hills and the verdant countryside of Vagamon, the residency will provide a perfect environment for writers to pursue their writing in solitude, and sometimes engage in stimulating ideas and discussion with like-minded residents. It is a two-storey house which can be shared with one or two other residents. It is equipped with a functional kitchen, separate bathroom for each of the three rooms and a balcony overlooking the hills. The road up leads to a tea estate and down to the campus. The resident is welcomed to use all the facilities on campus such as gym, library, common spaces … The DC Books team is based in Kottayam - about 2 hours drive from Vagamon - and visits the campus weekly. On a daily basis, the resident is looked after by Mr Roy, the caretaker of the house and the faculty staff.

Sarah Martine Voke

Researcher and translator

My project is to work on the first French translation of Meena Alexander’s writing, beginning with her memoir Fault Lines. This book weaves together her personal life journey from Kerala to New York with profound reflections on the impact of living in exile and the power of poetry. I wish to step into the world she evokes so vividly and to return with a transformed understanding of the roots that grounded her writing.

Sarah Voke completed a PhD in Comparative Literature in Marseille which focused on contemporary women poets (“Meena Alexander, Seher Cakir, Amina Saïd: three feminine voices of exile”, 2022). Her work explores the interconnections between poetry, experiences of exile, multilingualism and identity, from a phenomenological perspective. She is currently preparing a book publication based on her doctoral research. Based in the French Alps, she teaches anglophone literature and translation at the University Savoie Mont Blanc in Chambéry.

Sophie d’Aubreby

Author

I hope this writing residency will open new lines of writing, give me new threads to pull, a few fertile translations and a solid seam to stand the test of the months that will follow. Threads that bind and guide the research and writing to come.

Sophie d’Aubreby was born in 1988 in Brussels, raised in France, and she is a writer. Her debut novel S'en aller (Inculte, 2021) followed the short story Déplier les jambes (Lamiroy, 2020), and her prose piece Je me loge dans ma propre nuque will be published in the Haitian literary magazine DO KRE I S in September 2025. She is currently finalizing a second novel exploring themes of loss, as well as a collection of short stories written by inmates during a residency at Aiton prison (France), in partnership with the association Lectures Plurielles. Her work also includes numerous short stories published in literary magazines or recorded in audio format. Since 2023, excerpts from S'en aller have been adapted into a sound and visual performance by the CCAS cultural program, touring its centers before a residency and performance in 2024 at Maison Poème in Brussels.

Past Laureates

First Edition (2023 - 2024)
Corinne Morel Darleux