The Centre for Creative Writing and Translation (CCWT) will nurture and mentor interested students and staff as well as early and mid-career writers and translators, exposing them to the best practices in world literature. The Centre will foster an atmosphere in which writers and translators across levels can hone their craft and work in an undistracted manner. Towards this end, the Centre will organise mentoring workshops and public talks by established writers and translators — and eventually, residencies for writing and translation.
CCWT Speakers and Resource Persons
Fióna Bolger
Fióna Bolger is an experienced facilitator and poet. She has run workshops for Yoda Press Delhi, IIT Madras, Irish Writers’ Centre and Mother Tongues Festival, Dublin. Her first collection a compound of words was published by Yoda Press, 2019.
Nandini Krishnan
Nandini Krishnan is the author of Hitched: The Modern Woman and Arranged Marriage (Random House, 2013) and Invisible Men: Inside India’s Transmasculine Networks (Penguin Random House, 2018).
Thomas Pruiksma
Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma is an author, translator, teacher, and performer. His translation of the classical Tamil masterpiece on ethics, power, and love, The Kural: Tiruvalluvar’s Tirukkural, was recently published by Beacon Press.
Anne Tannam
Anne Tannam is a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) who helps writers to design and sustain flourishing writing practices. For more on Anne’s coaching, visit www.creativecoaching.ie. Anne has published three poetry collections, the latest ‘Twenty-six Letters of a New Alphabet’ was published with Salmon Poetry in July 2021. For more on Anne’s poetry, visit www.annetannampoetry.ie
Rayji de Guia
Rayji de Guia is a fiction writer, poet, and illustrator. Her work can be found in Asian Cha, The Deadlands, harana poetry, Journal of English Studies and Comparative Literature, The Pinch, and elsewhere. She has received prizes from the Gémino H. Abad Awards for Poetry and the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature. She was a writer-in-residence at the Chennai Mathematical Institute in the February – April 2023, during which time she wrote her first book of short stories, Provincia y Dolorosa. Currently, she is an instructor at the University of the Philippines – Diliman.
Akhila Ramnarayan
Dr Akhila Ramnarayan is a scholar, theatre actor, and indie musician. A professor of literature at Sai University, she currently also serves as Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. She completed her PhD in postcolonial studies from the Ohio State University in 2006, soon after which she began working in theatre and music as a performing artist in addition to her academic pursuits. In her work as both researcher and practitioner, she is fascinated by the interplay of genres and forms across cultures and time periods.
CCWT Events and Recordings
All the Words in the World: A Poetry Workshop by Fióna Bolger
In this workshop, participants bring almost forgotten words out to play, find connections and stories once lost between languages, and, perhaps, learn some new words along the way.
Thinking with Nature: Another Way In – A Poetry Workshop by Fióna Bolger
This workshop explores the relationship between humans and nature. It explores a view of nature that humans are part of and not central to understanding the world.
An Apprenticeship to Aliveness: A talk by Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma
The Science of Translation: Balancing Structure, Meaning, Style, and Rhythm
Sustaining a Flourishing Writing Practice: A Talk by Anne Tannam
Believing in yourself as a writer can be hard, and sustaining a regular writing practice can be even harder. As writers, what should we focus on to stay energised and focused on our art and craft? In this session, the focus is on the key factors needed to help writers stay committed to their practice, despite the ebb and flow of a writing life.
Women Through Languages: Writing in Translation – Rayji de Guia
The Fragments We Hold: A Songwriter's Notes on Process
Is what makes a poem a poem also what makes a song a song? How does appreciating poetry – and curiosity about the workings of poetic imagination – help a songwriter hone her craft? And how might a window into songwriting inflect a poet’s approach to the writing process? As someone who has loved both literature and music since she was a child, Akhila Ramnarayan identifies affinities and fruitful dissonances between these two worlds from her own lived and felt experience. In this talk, Akhila traces the creative trajectory of a single song, an experiment in ekphrasis (turning visual into verbal, image into word) from her forthcoming EP with musical collaborator Doug Carraway.