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 two decades, Mary is a cultural curator, researcher and arts manager, she is the Director of the Shillong Literary Festival since its first edition in 2021; she has worked in publishing, culture, arts, and the social sector for the last three decades.
The residency is located at Rachna Bookshop 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, 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.