Mauritian author of Riambel Priya Hein completed the 2024 Fall Residency at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program (IWP), where she spent a few weeks doing research and finishing her new novel, Tamarin, which will be published by The Indigo Press in 2025. In 2019, she had already been selected for the International Writing Program’s Women’s Creative Mentorship Project.
Priya Hein joined 31 other writers from around the world, who shared their writing with each other and the Iowa City literary community in a series of public events. She is the fifth residency writer from Mauritius, joining the late Farhad A.K. Sulliman Khoyratty (2010), Barlen Pyamootoo (2012), Shenaz Patel (2016), and Umar Timol (2018).
In the photos above, the author read from her novel Riambel and signed copies for readers at the Prairie Lights Bookstore, as part of the IWP Sunday Afternoon Reading Series. The bookstore hosted IWP residents every Sunday for a few weeks. Priya Hein shared the evening with fellow resident Daryl Li from Singapore and Putra Hidayatullah from Indonesia.
Other events included panels with fellow residents for the Iowa City Book Festival (above left) and a reading at the Shambaugh House (above right), a lecture given by the author on Mauritian Literature (below left), and even a staged reading of Riambel (below right).
The author also took the opportunity to attend the 2024 Neustadt Lit Fest in Oklahoma, where fellow Mauritian author Ananda Devi (pictured below with Priya Hein) was awarded the The Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
Congratulations, Priya!
For more information about Priya Hein’s work, please contact Anna Soler-Pont (anna@pontas-agency.com).