Explore future and past residents of National Centre for Writing.
Future residents
Mikołaj Denderski (September 2024)
Mikołaj Denderski is a translator of English-language literature into Polish. Born in Byto
m, Poland, he lives in Krakow, where he graduated in English Studies from Jagiellonian University. He has translated modern fiction, literary essays, popular science and humanities. His translations include works by American and British authors (e.g. James Baldwin, Eliot Weinberger, Joan Didion, David Foster Wallace, David Graeber) as well as by writers of the English language from Southeast Asia (Amanda Lee Koe, Shubhangi Swarup). In 2022 he was granted a Visegrad literary residency (to work on James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time), and in 2023 he received recognition as a recipient of Krakow UNESCO City of Literature Award. He taught classes in literary translation at Jagiellonian University and the University of Lodz.
Yu Teng-Wei (October 2024)
Yu Teng-Wei is a Taipei-based translator working in Chinese and English. He collaborates with cultural institutions in Taiwan and has translated nonfiction works into Chinese, including John Mauceri’s The War on Music and William Deresiewicz’s The Death of the Artist. His first translation of Taiwanese literature into English, The Mountain Rat, a short story by Atayal writer Lulyang Nomin, is forthcoming this October by Strangers Press. He is currently a PhD student at National Taiwan Normal University.
The residency is part of our collaboration with the Cultural Division of the Taipei Representative Office in the UK and the National Museum of Taiwan Literature and is offered with support from the Ministry of Culture, Taiwan.
Shengchi Hsu (October 2024)
Shengchi Hsu, born and raised in Taichung Taiwan, received his MA in English from the University of Salford and studied for a Ph.D. in Literary Translation at the University of Warwick. He has now returned to Taiwan, where he works as an English tutor, after spending two decades as an FE Lecturer in English and Education in Manchester, U.K.
As a second-language translator into English, he has contributed two short story translations, “A Daughter (女兒命)” by Lin You-hsuan (林佑軒) and “Violet (紫花)” by Hsu Yu-cheng (徐譽誠) to Queer Taiwanese Literature: a Reader. He has also co-translated eight classical Taiwanese Han (漢) poems with Canadian poet, Evan Jones, which were published in the PN Review.
He is currently completing the translation of 囚徒 by Qiu Miao-jin (邱妙津) to be featured in the Strangers Press series of Literature from Taiwan chapbooks. On completion, he will begin translating Taiwanese poetry from the Japanese colonial period and the poetry of the prominent Taiwanese poet, Xiang Yang 向陽.
The residency is part of our collaboration with the Cultural Division of the Taipei Representative Office in the UK and the National Museum of Taiwan Literature and is offered with support from the Ministry of Culture, Taiwan.
Seo Sujin (November 2024)
Seo Sujin is a Korean novelist. Born and raised in Seoul, Sujin received her BA in Korean literature from Ewha Women’s University and her MA in creative writing from Myongji University.
Seo Sujin’s debut novel Korean Teachers won the 25th Hankyoreh Literature Prize in 2020. Korean Teachers goes behind the Korean Wave to reveal the absurdities of Korean society, such as women, race, labour, and class, while detailing the Korean language education scene. Translated into English in 2022, Korean Teachers was said to be “one of the most hyped and discussed Korean translations of the year” in the media.
Since 2021, Seo Sujin has published novels Yujin and Dave and Oleander and a short story collection Gold Rush, which won the 13th Munhakdongne Young Writer’s Award in 2022. She focuses on the lives of Korean immigrants in Australia throughout her work.
Sujin is a certified Korean language lecturer and has taught at University of Seoul and Sungkyunkwan University. She is currently teaching at Sydney Community College and Parramatta Community College.
Sofie Verraest (April 2025)
Sofie Verraest writes and performs in Dutch, English, and West-Flemish. Their poetry, prose, and nonfiction are published in magazines and reviews in Europe, the US, and Australia. In 2023 they won the VLOED writing contest and received a talent development grant from Flanders Literature. Earlier, they were selected as fiction fellow of the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation (2018), as one of Ninth Letter’s “New Voices in International Writing” (2019), as a writing fellow of the Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart, 2020) and Pogon Zagreb (2021), and as Deus Ex Machina’s Dutch-language talent of the year (2022), and pre-selected for the Iowa International Writing Program (2020). Recent publications include the novella “She Kong” (Failbetter Magazine, 2023) and its Dutch self-translation “Sji Kong” (Deus Ex Machina, 2022), as well as the poetry cycle “Waking Up Going to Sleep,” which was included in Versopolis’s Poetry Expo (2023). They hold a PhD in Literature, teach part-time at Ghent university and the KASK School of Arts, and are fascinated by multi- and translingualism in writing and literature; self-translation; mother tongue concepts; imagination and experience of spaces, cities, and landscapes; flash fiction; water, fluidity, and hydro-feminism; Brussels and its (Southern) Periphery; and folklore 2.0 and how to reimagine folktales and rituals. They live in Brussels and probably so should you.
Sofie is currently working on their first novel, a performance about growing up on language borders both real and metaphorical, and a narrative book of poetry. They will likely spend most of their time in residency on the latter.
This Dragon Hall residency is part of our exchange with Passa Porta.
Past residents
We were delighted to host three writers and translators from Singapore in virtual residence, from June to December 2023, with the generous support of the National Arts Council of Singapore.
Nur-El-Hudaa Jaffar (June to December 2023)
Nur-El-Hudaa Jaffar has translated children’s picture books, fiction and poetry since 2017. She won the Inaugural MASTERA Translation Prize for Poetry in 2019 and has conducted translation workshops for students. She is also an editorial consultant and the author of eight children’s picture books. In 2017, her short stories won the first and second prizes at the Golden Point Award (Malay language category), organised by the National Art Council of Singapore. She has been a moderator and speaker at events such as the Singapore Writers Festival and the Asian Festival of Children’s Content.
Sim Wai-chew (June to December 2023)
Wai-chew Sim obtained his BA (Honours) from the University of East Anglia and his PhD from the University of Warwick. His work has appeared in Textual Practice, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, and CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture. His English translation of Singapore writer Joo-Ming Chia’s sinophone novel, Exile or Pursuit [放逐与追逐] was published by Balestier Press in 2019. Website
Tse Hao Guang (June to December 2023)
Tse Hao Guang (謝皓光) is the author of The International Left-Hand Calligraphy Association (Tinfish Press, 2023) and Deeds of Light (Math Paper Press, 2015), the latter shortlisted for the 2016 Singapore Literature Prize. He edits or has edited the collaborative e-journal OF ZOOS; UnFree Verse (Ethos Books, 2017), the anthology of Singapore poetry in received and nonce forms; literary food writing anthology Food Republic (Landmark Books, 2020); and the new edition of Windham-Campbell prize-winning poet Wong May’s 1969 debut, A Bad Girl’s Book of Animals (Ethos Books, 2023). He is a 2016 fellow of the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program and the 2018 National Writer-in-Residence at Nanyang Technological University. Poems and essays appear in Poetry, Poem-a-Day, The Yale Review, Poetry Northwest, Entropy and elsewhere. Website
Image (c) Daryl Qilin Yam
Elhum Shakerifar (December 2023)
Elhum Shakerifar is a writer and translator, most recently of PEN Award-winning, Warwick Prize-nominated Negative of a Group Photograph by Azita Ghahreman, translated alongside poet Maura Dooley (Bloodaxe Books, 2018). She is currently one of Writerz & Scribez’ inaugural poetry Griots. Elhum is also a BAFTA-nominated producer and curator working through her London-based company Hakawati (‘storyteller’ in Arabic).
This Dragon Hall Cottage Visible Communities residency is generously supported by the Francis W Reckitt Arts Trust.
Lee Yeon Ju (November 2023)
Lee Yeon Ju is a playwright and director from Korea. Her plays, and her novel, focus on the stories of socially invisible people, including the disabled, LGBTIQ individuals, and female workers. She is the winner of various awards, including the 8th DOOSAN Artist Award 2017, and ‘K-Theatre Awards Best 7 of 2019’ from the National Theatre Association of Korea. She will research contemporary British theatre during her residency, supported by the Arts Council of Korea.
Anam Zafar (September 2023)
Anam Zafar is a translator based in Birmingham, UK, working from Arabic and French to English. This year she received a PEN Translates Award for her co-translation, with Nadiyah Abdullatif, of the graphic novel YOGHURT AND JAM (OR HOW MY MOTHER BECAME LEBANESE) by Lena Merhej (forthcoming, Balestier Press). In 2021 she received the Gulf Coast Prize in Translation and the Stinging Fly New Translator’s Bursary. She also volunteers for World Kid Lit, is a member of the Translators Association’s Access Working Group, and is an Editorial Board member for The Linguist. Other collaborations with the National Centre for Writing include a translation mentorship with Meena Kandasamy (2020-21) and delivering creative translation workshops to schools through the Stephen Spender Trust. Twitter: @anam_translates; www.anamzafar.com. Image (c) Aamna Zafar.
This Dragon Hall Cottage Visible Communities residency is generously supported by the Francis W Reckitt Arts Trust.
Margot Douaihy (September 2023)
Margot Douaihy, PhD, is the author of the queer crime novel Scorched Grace, the inaugural title of Gillian Flynn Books. Scorched Grace was named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a Marie Claire Best Book of 2023, a CrimeReads Best Debut, one of The Guardian‘s Best Recent Crime and Thrillers, and it has been optioned for a screen adaptation. In fall 2023, Margot will join Emerson College as an Assistant Professor in Popular Fiction Writing and Literature. She will spend her residency developing the third book in her mystery series.
As part of our Visible Communities programme, we hosted two translators in virtual residence, Nadiyah Abdullatif and Rabi Thapa.
Nadiyah Abdullatif (June to September 2023)
Nadiyah Abdullatif is a Mauritius-born, Scotland-based editor and translator working from Arabic, French, Mauritian Creole and Spanish into English. Her translations of Mauritian literature, comics and graphic novel excerpts have appeared in Wasafiri, ArabLit Quarterly and The Markaz Review. Her latest project, a co-translation of a Lebanese graphic novel titled Yoghurt and Jam (or how my mother became Lebanese) (forthcoming 2023, Balestier Press), received a PEN Translates award. She has previously been a translator-in-residence with the National Centre for Writing and will spend this year’s residency building her work on Mauritian literature and exploring underrepresented languages and genres in translation.
Rabi Thapa (July to October 2023)
Rabi Thapa is a writer, editor and translator from Nepal, now working out of a village in mid-Wales. He is the founder Editor of La.Lit (www.lalitmag.com), and the author of Thamel, Dark Star of Kathmandu (Speaking Tiger Books). For Visible Communities, Rabi is proposing to “translate” the lived experience of the Nepali-origin community in Bannau Brycheiniog through oral histories and media drawn from the community’s activities. He hopes to create a patchwork quilt of the Nepali experience in the region, indicative of how a diaspora can adapt to the circumstances created by a unique colonial history. Rabi also undertook a Visible Communities residency at Dragon Hall in June 2021, during which he worked on a translation of Boni (1991) by the pioneering feminist writer Parijat (1937-1993).
Santanu Bhattacharya (August 2023)
Santanu Bhattacharya is the author of One Small Voice (Penguin Fig Tree), an Observer Best Debut Novel for 2023. He grew up in India, and studied at the University of Oxford and National University of Singapore. Santanu is the winner of the 2021 Mo Siewcharran Prize, the Life Writing Prize and a London Writers’ Award. His works have nominated for the 4thWrite Prize, Blue Pencil Agency First Novel Award, and Pontas/JJ Bola Emerging Writers’ Prize. His short fiction have appeared in Commonwealth Writers’ adda and TOKEN magazines. He is a graduate of the Tin House Writers’ Workshop. He currently lives in London.@santanu_bx on Instagram and Twitter
Csilla Toldy (August 2023)
Csilla Toldy is a writer and translator. Originally from Hungary, she has lived in the United Kingdom since arriving with a writer’s visa in 1996. She has an MA in creative writing for film and television (Sheffield University 2003) and won the Hartley-Merrill and Katapult Prizes with her scripts. Her publications include poetry, short stories and essays in various UK and Irish literary magazines, as well as three poetry pamphlets: Red Roots – Orange Sky (2013), The Emigrant Woman’s Tale (2015) and Vertical Montage (2018) all published with Lapwing Belfast. Her short stories were compiled in Angel Fur and other stories (Stupor Mundi, 2019). Her debut novel Bed Table Door, explores the idea of freedom against the backdrop of the Cold War between socialist Hungary and Thatcher’s England. (Wrecking Ball Press, 2023).
Carole Hailey (August 2023)
Carole Hailey completed the six-month Guardian/UEA novel writing course taught by Bernardine Evaristo, who imbued Carole with such a love for writing fiction that she abandoned her career in law to undertake an MA in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, followed by a PhD in Creative Writing at Swansea University. Carole was a London Library Emerging Writer 2020/21. Her debut novel The Silence Project was published in February 2023 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books. It is a 2023 BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick and a Kindle No. 1 Bestseller and was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize Peggy Chapman-Andrews First Novel Award. Carole lives in Wales with her husband and two rescue dogs.
Santanu, Csilla and Carole’s residencies are a legacy of the Desmond Elliott Prize.
Wayne Rée (July 2023)
Wayne Rée (he/him) is a writer from Singapore. He’s the co-creator of the prose/comics hybrid, Work-Life Balance, and the comic, Worlds Apart: A Conversation About Mental Health. He wrote the text-based game, Internal Damnation, and co-created the award-winning audio series, Ghost Maps. “Down Into the Waters”—his contribution to the speculative fiction anthology, Fish Eats Lion Redux—was praised by The Straits Times as “a particularly bright spot” of the collection. Wayne will spend his residency working on his first novel. His residency is generously supported by the National Arts Council of Singapore.
Paige Aniyah Morris (July 2023)
Paige Aniyah Morris is a writer and translator from Jersey City, New Jersey, USA who divides her time between the United States and Korea. She holds BAs in Literary Arts and Ethnic Studies from Brown University and an MFA in Fiction from Rutgers University. The recipient of awards and honors from the Fulbright Program, the American Literary Translators Association, the Daesan Foundation, the Literature Translation Institute of Korea, and others, she has translated works by writers including Pak Kyongni, Chang Kang-myoung, Ji-min Lee, Seo Jang-won, and is the co-translator with Emily Yae Won of Han Kang’s forthcoming We Do Not Part. In both her writing and translations, she is deeply interested in the speculative as well as the stories of those on the social margins, including stories by and about gender and sexual minorities, racial and ethnic minorities, migrants, and people with disabilities. During her residency, she hopes to make meaningful connections with other members of the global literary community in Norwich and apply the lessons learned to her continued practice as a Black American translator of Korean literature.
This residency is supported by the Literature Translation Institute of Korea.
Jan – Jun 2023
Vida Adamczewski, Maddie Mortimer, Cate West, Amarylis De Gryse, Anxhela Çikopano Hoxha, Marija Girevska, Laimonas Briedis, Akvilė Kavaliauskaitė, Gabriela Manova, Dragana Erjavšek, Meihan Boey, Andina Subarja, Noor H. Dee, Hsuan Pai and Amanda Addison.
2022
Akshita Nanda, Crispin Rodrigues, Daryl Qilin Yam, Megan Bradbury (supported by the Québec Government Office in London and l’Entente de développement culturel entre le gouvernement du Québec et la Ville de Québec), Juliette Bernatchez (supported by the Québec Government Office in London and l’Entente de développement culturel entre le gouvernement du Québec et la Ville de Québec), Arthur Reiji Morris, Shin Jung Keun (supported by the Arts Council of Korea), Hayahisa Tomiyasu, Dawid Mobolaji, Yelena Moskovich, Els Beerten, Penny Boxall, Soobin Kim, Clare Richards, Adrija Ghosh, Nadiyah Abdullatif, Lydia Hounat, Vineet Lal, Coco Mbassi, Shagufta Sharmeen Tania, Sylvie Marie and Diana Evans.
2021
Yvette Siegert, Shagufta Sharmeen Tania, Charlotte Geater, Mattho Mandersloot (supported by the Literature Translation Institute of Korea), Anne Amienne, Carrie Patten, Julia Webb, Jennifer Anne Champion, Nuraliah Norasid (supported by the National Arts Council of Singapore), Nazry Bahrawi (supported by the National Arts Council of Singapore), Derek Barretto, Rabi Thapa, Gitanjali Patel, Sawad Hussain, Anam Zafar, Alexandra Birrell, Megan Bradbury, Liz Breslin, Lynn Buckle, Vahni Capildeo, Valur Gunnarsson, Marcin Wilk and Shash Trevett.
2020
Thomas Heerma van Voss, Paddy Richardson, Anita Terpstra, Vahur Afanasjev, Motoyuki and Hitomi Shibata.
2019
Kim Heayon, Kang Young-sook, Katie Hale, Bregje Hofsted, Eva Meijer, Ekaterina Petrova, Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Nuril Basri, Agustinus Wibowo, Jeremy Tiang (supported by the National Arts Council of Singapore), Anton Hur (supported by the Literature Translation Institute Korea), JY Yang (supported by the National Arts Council of Singapore), Yoshitaka Haba (part of an exchange exploring literature museums and literary heritage in Japan and the UK, funded by the GB Sasakawa Foundation), Kathleen Vereecken (supported by the Flemish Literature Fund), Debby Lukito Goeyardi and Reda Gaudiamo (in partnership with the British Council as part of the Indonesia Market Focus at The London Book Fair 2019).
2018
Jun Sung Hyun, Jeongrye Choi (supported by Arts Council Korea), Ivanka Mogilska (supported by the Embassy of the Republic of Bulgaria in London and the State Institute for Culture at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and Nazli Tabatabai-Khatambakhsh.
