Anamot Press Residency
For 2023 and beyond, Casa Julfa and Anamot Press are collaborating to offer fully-funded residencies for writers and poets.
Anamot Press is an independent publishing press based in London, creating bridges across borders and social struggles to connect and amplify diaspora stories. Alongside publishing books and curating events, through this collaboration, a unique writers residency is being offered, with a focus on wellbeing, without obligation.
Since its creation Casa Julfa has hosted many exceptional writers and long dreamt of creating a dedicated writers residency to support the development of untold or lesser heard stories. Her doors are open to all, but particularly seeks to support those who make work which promotes indigenous ancestral practices and explores diaspora experiences.
[...] stop spelling ourselves out in the alphabet given to us. - Cathy Park Hong
When Corinne of Casa Julfa and Tatevik of Anamot Press had an initial conversation about a writers residency, they felt an insistent connection, trust, and a sense of collective social responsibility. This partnership feels like finding two halves of the same childhood photograph. Casa Julfa and Anamot Press are committed to actively dismantling colonial and capitalist tendencies within the arts and literature. Through the residencies, we seek to share stories across issues often shrouded in shame or silence. Anamot Press publishes writers of colour and people in marginalised positions who might be living in between places, identities or in countries where their realities and experiences are repeatedly questioned and their stories contorted to appeal to dominant cultures. Anamot Press supports writers who are actively expanding the way that experiences of race, gender, migration, class, disability and so on, should be told and performed.
The residency will run for two weeks, usually starting and ending on a Thursday. Self-catering accommodation is provided and a carefully curated guide for your stay including inspirational reading and watching materials will be provided in advance. All logistical information will also be shared with residents in advance of their travels.
In recognition that writers and poets who are creating work out of/in defiance of experiences of intersecting oppressions, which can be emotionally and physically exhausting as well as economically restricted, Anamot Press and Casa Julfa believe in providing holistic support:
Starting with the basic and initial barrier: money. Casa Julfa x Anamot Press Residency spaces will be fully subsidised for writers.
No competition, low intervention: we will start the residency by simply inviting writers into an inspiring, interdisciplinary and welcoming space. During the two weeks of their residency, writers choose how they would like to spend their time. We will experiment with different formats for the residency, ranging from self-supported to supported, as well as collective gatherings.
“Any kind of writing requires care, humility and empathic inquiry.” - Cathy Park Hong.
The residency will support writers to engage with their natural surroundings and nearby La Roche-Posay region known for its abundant mineral waters.
Two writers will be in residence for two weeks alongside practitioners working with clay and other fields. The residency encourages writers to be in dialogue with each other either directly through their work or indirectly through the themes and their individual lived experiences.
We also offer writers the opportunity to do a somatic clay workshop, which draws on Casa Julfa’s philosophy, that work, experimentation and play with clay is a creative and healing act in itself which does not depend on any defined outcome or finished product.
Two writers have been selected and will be in residence in autumn 2023.
We will launch an open call for the autumn 2024 residencies at the end of 2023, follow @anamotpress and @casajulfa and subscribe to Casa Julfa’s newsletter to find out more about upcoming opportunities and learn more about the writers in residence this year.
The 2023 residency programme is kindly subsidised by Casa Julfa. In 2024, we will offer between 2-4 fully subsidised spaces.
About Anamot Press
Anamot (Անամոթ) means shameless in Armenian. Tatevik Sargsyan founded Anamot Press in order to publish queer experiences and other stories across borders, with no shame. Launching in lockdown with The Poetry Streaming Series, Tatevik invited over 40 writers - including Bhanu Kapil, Raymond Antrobus, Victoria Chang – for a recorded reading on Instagram.
The Sun Isn’t Out Long Enough is Anamot Press’ first publication, edited by Tatevik, includes a foreword by Mary Jean Chan and an afterword by Kazim Ali. This anthology explores a range of themes spanning belonging and loss in relation to migration, inhabiting the spaces in between identities, and diasporic desires. Through publishing queer writers across borders in the same anthology, Anamot Press has positioned itself as a convener, and continues to carve out a space for cross-border dialogue. Buy a copy online or from a local independent bookshop.
