About Us
The Kolam Writers’ Workshop is an annual, two-week, in-residence workshop for writers who not only need to write but also need to get it right. We take your writing seriously because we believe you do too. You will get to hang-out with fellow writers, dance and theatre professionals, poets and expert storytellers in an extraordinarily beautiful surrounding. However, it will be a lot of work. The workshop is experiential. Exhausting. Transformative. You are going to be a different person at the end of the workshop.
And oh yes, it is also a lot of fun.
Our Team
Kolam Fellows 2023
The Kolam Fellowship is intended to support writers with a significant publication history, as they work on their next project. Two Fellows are selected every year. The Fellowship provides a month-long residency at Adishakti from March through April. The Fellows are free to work on any project of their choosing. Since the residency overlaps with the two weeks of the Workshop, participants have an opportunity to interact and learn with the Kolam Fellows.
It is with great pleasure and pride we present our two Kolam Fellows for 2023.
Workshop Structure
There is a lot going on at the workshop and its structure is designed to schedule all these activities as efficiently as possible. For details regarding workshop fees, residential details, daily activities and the work expected of you, click on the link below.
Testimonials
Bree Alexander
Pervin, Anil and Akshat, bringing their varied writerly backgrounds and facilitation styles, formed a generous team and helped create a friendly dynamic. Adishakti also provided an ideal setting to connect socially with the other participants as well as space and serenity to delve into our creative worlds.
Ankita Athawale
The mentors are cheerful people, fine writers and worthy mentors. Thankfully they aren’t all kindness in their critiques of your stories! Best of all, the peer group, friends and mentors earned in the workshop stay with you for life.
Vishnu Bagdawala
The most important thing I gained from having attended this workshop was to know the response that readers had to my stories. Having your stories critiqued by more than a dozen people really helps you put things in perspective.
Sameen Borkar
This workshop has altered the way I read a novel, write and rewrite a story, and play with words, form, and structure. Anil, Pervin, and Akshat have been very influential and supportive in their unique ways and continue to do so. The best 14 days I’ve spent cooking up stories.
Debosmita Dam
Anil, Akshat, and Pervin are not only extremely kind mentors, but are also very generous critics, as they share their insight and experience with the workshop participants with sheer positivity.
Sarah Farheen
I considered myself an under-confident writer before the workshop. But at the workshop I learnt that the first thing I had to lose was my pessimism. The exercises conducted were so liberating and such good practice that I could feel the creative juices trickling through the sulci of my brain.
Lavina Galani
The workshop was a turning point in my writing skills in more ways than one. Firstly, the environment, the mentors, and the fellow writers provided for the much needed inspiration. Critical reviews from all of them provided over 20 different perspectives on one particular piece.
Prashant Gokule
Anil, Pervin and Akshat are very professional, honest and on the money with their critique. Not only do they steer you in right direction, but also lend a helping hand along the way with their workshop exercises and carefully chosen reading excerpts.
Nandhitha Hariharan
I walked into the workshop sceptical of what just 2 weeks can do to my writing – I walked out feeling like it was the best experience of my life.
Ayush Jain
The workshop is a wonderful space to engage with invested mentors, get exposed to strategies to work your way around a writer’s block, to spark new ideas, and above all, to meet a bunch of people who love, crave and breathe literature.
Kalyan Kankanala
Anil, Pervin and Akshat go out of the way to educate, advise and support participants, and I would strongly recommend it to every aspiring writer.
Uday Kanungo
I am indebted to this workshop, first of all, for the sense of camaraderie and deep friendship it instilled in me for fellow writers and the instructors, with whom it was possible to share anything about writing and literature.
Harvinder Kaur
This is an intensive workshop with very sincere mentors who become your friends and hand-hold you long after the workshop. If you get a chance, don’t miss it!
Aekta Khubchandani
All the mentors bought different tools and perspectives to writing. We unlayered gravitas, context and subtext in undeniable ways. I remember rasam rice days, Auroville’s freshly baked cake, crying after Arundhathi Subramaniam’s session and not knowing why. All of this is a memory that won’t fade
Tapan Mozumdar
I recommend this to everyone — if you get selected through the discerning scrutiny of the trainers — as the workshop is sure to open new perspective to your writing universe.
Debosmita Nandy
I can, without a doubt, say that the two weeks of this workshop has completely transformed the way I approach writing.
Archana Nair
Staying at Adishakti for two weeks and getting to attend classes from Anil and Pervin was the highlight of my year 2017.
Nalin Pasricha
This workshop seemed unique even before the program began. For some weeks prior to the program we were sent one short story a day to read and comment upon. The stories were very diverse and eased us into the frame of mind and quality required for the program.
Abhilasha Pawar
The Workshop was a creatively fulfilling experience where you get to hang out with other writers like yourself in a natural setting. With great mentors who give you new outlooks on writing and even yourself, I came back raring to go and write more.
Stephen Preetham
I attended this workshop a year into my foray into writing, and it was the best thing I have done. Pervin and Anil helped me understand techniques to tell stories, form characters, plot plots (not a typo, that) and manage to tell stories in a way that is uniquely mine.
Bhaskar Rao
The workshop is one of the best writing workshops I have ever been to. I loved the venue – Adishakti is a writer’s paradise. The instructors Pervin, Anil, Akshat are the kind of mentors who could change your writing life.
Pooja Rathnakumar
This workshop is a nurturing, engendering space for writers who want to crack through daily monotony and instead, look within for answers to their writerly preoccupations and questions. The workshop is intensive, and easily the best writing workshop out there for people who want to take their writing seriously.
Pooja Ruparel
The workshop turned my half-baked abilities and aspirations into skills and a way of thinking, to create sustainably with. The teachers here are true Gurus and taught me to trust and value my style and to appreciate others through the round of critiques that inculcated self-evaluation and reliance.
Kaushiki Saraswat
The workshop is a place where you are allowed to ‘fail spectacularly’ and what else does an artist want from the world: sheer acceptance of their art with open arms and warm suggestions.
Siddharth Singh
The workshop allowed me to go further than reading between the lines, and start reading behind them. I left the workshop with a richer understanding of fiction’s mechanics. It is an all-access pass behind the great stage of writing; the sights are most surely worth seeing.
Jabili Sirineni
The workshop — like most important things in life — happened as an unexpected adventure. Away from urban chaos, the workshop was a catharsis where reading, writing and talking about words seemed to become a liberating process. It laid routes to get to a most wonderful place in my own mind.
Charumathi Supraja
Being a writer is not a condition. It is an act. Writing is not about mists of inspiration oozing from your fingers as stories, poems and novels. Writing is about setting down words, removing words, reading again, writing again. This is what I learnt at the workshop.
Shruthi Suresh
Immersion in word-play and the craft of writing created a momentum that thankfully has not reduced so far. The fantastic friends I made and the amazing mentors I gained were the icing on the cake.
Aarti Wani
At the end of two intense weeks in the quaintly verdurous Adhishakti, even as it dawned on me that one must write to write, the experience of unlearning and learning was deliciously piquant, thanks to the mentors- the gently persuasive Pervin, the insightful Anil and the fun Akshat.
Prithvi Yadama
This is one of the most comprehensive writing workshops there is in India. The workshop helped me immensely with the technical aspects of writing fiction. We were exposed to so many different perspectives on the art of fiction and literature. The mentors are incredibly patient and continue to guide us in our journey.
Applying to the workshop
The 2023 edition of the workshop is from March 05, 2023 — March 19, 2023. The deadline for applications is December 20, 2022. Applying to the Kolam Writers’ Workshop is a simple process. You simply have to send us either a story/ creative nonfiction piece or a set of poems. The tricky part of course is to figure out which of your work best represents you and your talents. Relax. We have pretty broad tastes in literature. A strong voice works well for us. But so does a quiet unobtrusive one filled with something meaningful to say. We like experimental pieces, but hey, we are also fond of Romeo and Juliet. Here’s one piece of advice: send us the work that you are most proud of. Check out the guidelines below, collect your material, and then apply.
Newsletter
Why wait till the workshop? Here is this month's serendipitous insight on the nature of creative work in the arts.
Gyaan
Billy Collins is usually introduced at talks and writeups as being “one of the most popular poets in America:”. That is because he is that rare combination: a poet with a sense of humour. Poets may bring down the house in private, but their poems are usually case studies in sobriety. Collins’ poems are marked with quips, anecdotes, jokes and stunning displays of lyrical mastery. In other words, the poems are fun to read aloud. This author of more than seven books, former poet laureate of the United States, professor and and instructor at countless workshops is always worth listening to.
Enjoy!