2025/26 First Peoples India-Australia Exchange Recipients Announced
We are thrilled to announce the recipients of the inaugural First Peoples India-Australia Exchange.
In October 2025, two First Nations writers from Australia will undertake a residency at Varuna for a week to write and connect with two Adivasi writers from India who will enjoy a month-long residency at the house. This role of host will be reciprocated in April 2026 when the two First Nations writers from Australia will travel to the prestigious literary residency, Sangam House.
The First Nations writers selected from an incredible field of applicants include award-winning Yankunytjatjara poet Ali Cobby Eckermann, who’s most recent book she is the earth, won both Book of the Year and the Indigenous Writers' Prize at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards last year, and Merinda Dutton, a Gumbaynggirr and Barkindji emerging writer, critic, and co-founder of Blackfulla Bookclub, an online community for First Nations stories. A lawyer by trade, in 2019 Dutton was recognised for her legal aid work and awarded the National Indigenous Legal Professional of the Year.
These celebrated writers will have the opportunity to forge collaborations with Adivasi authors Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, whose novels, collections and translations have been awarded the the JCB Prize for Literature, The Hindu Prize, and a Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar, and Beni (Yanbeni) Yanthan, Assistant Professor of English at Nagaland University, whose poetry, essays, reviews and short stories have been published widely.
The selected authors represent an incredible diversity in genre and thematic focus. Each applicant proposed a writing project that would benefit greatly from the opportunity for international exchange, and we expect to see brilliant new work grow out of this program. We are particularly excited that both the First Nations and the Adivasi cohorts include an established, celebrated writer, alongside a more emerging author, offering exciting possibilities for mentorship and career development.
We can’t wait to welcome Ali, Merinda, Beni and Sowvendra to Varuna, and to celebrate their work at the Blue Mountains Writers’ Festival later in the year.
Varuna is proud to be a CAIR grant recipient, and grateful for the support this organisation provides. CAIR is committed to promoting connections and practical cooperation between Australia and India.
Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar writes in English; translates from Santali, Hindi, and Bengali to English; and occasionally translates from English to Hindi. He is is the author of the novels, The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey (winner of a Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar in English) and My Father’s Garden (shortlisted for the JCB Prize for Literature), and the collection of stories, The Adivasi Will Not Dance (shortlisted for The Hindu Prize). He translated Manoj Rupda’s Hindi novel, Kaale Adhyaay, into English as I Named My Sister Silence (shortlisted for the JCB Prize for Literature); while his translation of Nalini Bera’s Bengali novel, Subarnarenu Subarnarekha, is forthcoming. His writings have been published in The Indian Express, The Hindu, Frontline, OPEN, Mint Lounge, FiftyTwo, and other places. He lives in Jharkhand, India.
Beni Yanthan (Yanbeni) is a writer belonging to the indigenous Lotha-Naga tribe of Nagaland. Her works encompassing poetry, essays, reviews and short stories have been published in various journals, anthologies, magazines, newspapers and forums such as Raiot, Sapiens, The Bangalore Review, The Bombay Literary Magazine, The Hindu, Outlook India and Muse India. As an academic, her area of study includes folk culture, vernacular literature and languages, oral traditions and literary theory. She currently works as Assistant Professor of English at Nagaland University.
Merinda Dutton is a Gumbaynggirr and Barkindji woman emerging writer, First Nations critic, and the co-founder of Blackfulla Bookclub, an online community for First Nations stories. In 2019 Dutton was recognised for her legal aid work with Aboriginal community and awarded the National Indigenous Legal Professional of the Year.
Ali Cobby Eckermann is an award-winning Yankunytjatjara poet. Her first collection little bit long time launched her literary career in 2009. In 2013 she won the Kenneth Slessor Prize and Book Of The Year (NSW) for Ruby Moonlight. In 2014, Ali was the inaugural recipient of the Tungkunungka Pintyanthi Fellowship at Adelaide Writers Week, and the first Aboriginal writer to attend the International Writing Program at University of Iowa. In 2017 she received a Windham Campbell Award for Poetry from Yale University. She was awarded a Literature Fellowship by the Australian Council for the Arts in 2018, and in 2019 was awarded a prestigious Civitella Ranieri Fellowship in Italy. She is the Earth, a verse novel, won the 2024 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Book of the Year and Indigenous Writers Prize and was shortlisted for the 2024 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards and the Stella Prize.
This program is presented in partnership with the First Nations Australia Writers Network (FNAWN), consultants Dr Roanna Gonsalves and Dr Mridula Chakraborty, with support from the Centre for Australia India Relations.
