It is something unique. Kodaikanal, Prince of the Hill Stations, has been hosting workshops for 36 years nonstop for aspiring Indian writers in English. 
Sponsored by the SCILET-Study Centre for Indian Literature in English and Translation, founded in 1985 by the 145year old American College Madurai, the workshops have caught the imagination of more than a thousand young men and women to win their way to the world of creative freedom.
The latest workshop was held on 6-8 August 2026 with the Swedish writer Zac O’Yeah as its leader.  His fiction has been translated into more than 20 languages. A popular radio, theatre and music personality, his novel ‘Mr. Majestic: The Tout of Bengaluru’ is being made into a feature film. Zac has also translated Indian fiction into Swedish. As a trekker to the unknown, he also a regular with National Geographic Traveller.   

Waheeda Rehman and her daughter Kashvi Rekhi

A few participants of the workshops have gone abroad to pursue their passion in prestigious colleges and universities. One instance is actor Waheeda Rehman’s daughter Kashvi Rekhy who wrote a thank you note in a volume ‘Love in Madurai’ dedicated to the memory of Prof Paul L. Love, Director of Development of SCILET.

“I was sixteen years old when I got chosen for the Creative Writing Workshop where I found my ‘calling.’ Thanks to Dr. Love and Mr. Robert Granner, (founders of the Workshop) I went on to major in Creative and Screenplay Writing in the University of Toronto. I am now writing my first book and I have the Workshop to thank”.

Luminaries associated with the Kodaikanal workshops

An alumna of KIS-Kodaikanal International School-the venue of the workshops, Rekhi, became script supervisor of the Amir Khan film Mangal Pandey: The Rising about the life of a hero of the first war of independence of 1847. It was premiered in Cannes and became the fourth highest grossing films in 2005. 
The workshops were launched in 1991 with Odisha’s professor turned poet Jayanta Mahapatra as its first Writer in Residence. The first Indian to win the Kendriya Sahitya Akademi Award for English Poetry in 1881, Prof. Mahapatra was honored with the Padma Shri in 2009. He visited the University of Iowa during 1976-77 as a Visiting Writer in its International Writing Program. 

It is admirable that the organizers have been able to rope in the some of the best minds of Indian literature in English to mentor their workshops. I found among them Kamaladas, Meena Alexander, K. Ayyappa Paniker, E. V. Ramakrishnan, Manu Joseph, Deepak Unnikrishann and Mridula Koshy all having their roots in Kerala.

2026 workshop led by Swedish writer Zac O’Yeah

Among other luminaries were Shiv K. Kumar, Sashi Deshpande, Gita Hariharn, Gieve Patel, Ranjit Hoskote, Manjula Padmanabhan, Tishani Doshi, Cyrus Mistry, Sanjana Kapoor and Anuja Chauhan.  

I have been fortunate in meeting and making friends with a number of them in various literature festivals including the Hay Festivals of 2010 and 2011 in Thiruvananthapuram.

Dr. Paul L. Love and R. Padmanabhan Nair were the brothers born apart who founded and nurtured SCILET as Professors of English at the American till they passed away in 2015 and 2020 respectively. 

Novelist Manu Joseph, Silver Jubilee Writer in Residence

The present Director Dr. Premila Paul, who was associated with the project from the very beginning, took me around when I met her at the American. She retired as Professor and head of English in the college. The Centre has a two storied red brick edifice dedicated to Paul Linder Love and its research library has its reading room named after R. Padmanabhan Nair.

Dr. Love, born in Michigan, joined the American after stint in Baring Union Christian College, Batala, Punjab. As a Presbyterian missionary he spent about sixty years of teaching and building institutions in India. He had his PhD in English Literature from North Western University in Evanston. 
R. Padmanabhan Nair aka RP Nair was a Gentle Giant well-versed in English, Malayalam and Tamil. Born in Harippad, Alappuzha district of Kerala, he did his MA in the University College, Thiruvananthapuram where he was a student of poet and critic Dr. K. Ayyappa Paniker who served on the Managing Committee of the SCILET. He had been to the  Bowling Green State University, Ohio and to New York for three years to do research on African-American Literature 

SCILET Director Premila Paul and Prof. Thomas K. Varghese

Dr. Premila explained to me the agony and ecstasy of bringing up a young Study Centre and its offshoot of the workshop, the first of its kind in India. Kavya Bharati and Kavithalaya are among its regular periodicals in English. 

Born in Nagarcoil Premila is the daughter of Gladys Evelyn Paul Devasahayam who served as Professor at Nagarcoil Womens Christian College.  Premila earned her PhD in English from Annamalai University based on a thematic study of the novels of Mulkraj Anand. She has been to the US four times to the Universities of Pennsylvania, Ohio and North Carolina. She also taught Indian literature in Nanjing Normal University, China. 

Interviewing Dr. Premila, with photos of Paul Love and RP Nair as a backdrop

Mridula Koshy who led the 2025 workshop, is an iconoclastic activist for the poor and downtrodden in Delhi. Her novel ‘Bicycle Dreaming’ focuses on family life in a waste worker community in the capital metropolis. It follows a 13-year-old girl named Noor, who dreams of owning a bicycle and working as a ‘kabadiwala’ (ragman) like her father. She has a growing readership in India, England and Italy. I met Mridula when she attended the Hay Festival of 2010 
Manu Joseph, the Writer in Residence for the silver jubilee session was born in my home town of Kottayam. He is the son of a journalist friend of mine Joseph Madapally, Bureau Chief of the United News of India, who rose to become writer-director of Malayalam films in Chennai. Manu’s first novel Serious Men (2010) won the Hindu Literary Prize and the PEN Open Book Award. 

Mridula Koshy, the 2025 Writer in Residence on a stroll

Manu was amused that most of his listeners in the inaugural session were young women. “I did see some boys here and there, on the fringes.” He wrote in his forward to the Silver Jubilee issue of Kavithalaya. “Story telling Is Always About Facts, Because It’s About Us. Then it occurred to me that it actually makes a lot of sense. A majority of readers of novels are women, including mine surely”. 

How nice of him to lay his thoughts on the young women of  Gloria Steinem era  so succinctly as a creative person, an editor-turned novelist, screen play writer and creator of an English web series Decoupled for Netflix!

.Budding writers at Kodaikanal International School

Zac’s workshop in progress at Kodai hilltop

In loving memory of Prof. R. Padmanabhan Nair