IN RESIDENCE IN APRIL 2026

From April 7th to May 4th, 2026

Tsissana Bibileishvili (Georgia) Translation

PRO HELVETIA FELLOWSHIP FOR THE TRANSLATION OF A SWISS WORK

Translation project (French > Georgian) “Histoire de l’homme qui ne voulait pas mourir“ by French-speaking Swiss writer Catherine Lovey (Zoé 2023)

Born in Tbilisi (Georgia) in 1944. Philologist and translator. Doctor, full professor at Caucasus University (Tbilisi). Doctoral thesis: “Typological comparison of phraseological expressions in French and Georgian.” Publications: 45 scientific works, 41 scientific translations (including Ferdinand de Saussure's “General Linguistics”), 58 literary translations. 2019 - Award for Best Translation of the Year, 2022 - Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters (French Ministry of Culture).

Sulagna Mukhopadhyay (India) Translation

PRO HELVETIA FELLOWSHIP FOR THE TRANSLATION OF A SWISS WORK

Translation project (German > Bengali) “Die Nicht Sterben“ by German-speaking Swiss writer Dana Grigorcea.

Translates from German and English languages into Bengali, including Kathrin Schmidt’s book of poems Fluβbild mit Engel which was published by Jadavpur University Press,Isabel Fargo Cole’s debut novel Die Grüne Grenze and Markus Kirchhofer’s collection of short stories Der Stachel, Christa Wolf’s famous novel Der geteilte Himmel, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, Martina Bitunajc’s non-fiction book Lea Deutsch/Ein Kind Des Schauspiels, Der Musik Und Des Tanzes, The House with the Stained-Glass Window by Zanna Sloniowska, and in January 2026, Melinda Nadj Abonji’s Swiss-German novel Tauben fliegen auf. She was invited by the Translatorforum of the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2023, and in 2025 invited by Cultural Ministry of Croatia to attend a residency at Zagreb’s Croatian Literary Translators’ Association (DHKP).

Alessandro Settimo (Italy) Translation

PRO HELVETIA FELLOWSHIP FOR THE TRANSLATION OF A SWISS WORK

Translation project (French > Italian) La main by French-speaking Swiss writer Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz

Alessandro Settimo studied philosophy at the University of Turin. He has translated works of philosophy and sociology into Italian, as well as classics of French literature. He is the author of several essays published in journals and four books. Finally, he edits the “Biblioteca Montecristo” collection for Efesto publishers in Rome.

Zorica Teofilova (North Macedonia) Translation

PRO HELVETIA FELLOWSHIP FOR THE TRANSLATION OF A SWISS WORK

Translation project (Italian > Macedonian) “Suona, Nora Blume“ by Italian-speaking Swiss writer Claudia Quadri.

Zorica Teofilova is a literary translator, editor, and project coordinator based in Skopje, North Macedonia. Trained in English and Italian language and literature, she holds a Master’s degree in Philology from the “Blaze Koneski” Faculty of Philology. She has worked for over two decades across publishing, academia, and cultural institutions, translating fiction, non-fiction, and specialist texts from English and Italian into Macedonian. A recipient of the 2014 Golden Quill Award of the Union of Literary Translators of Macedonia

Steven Wyss (Switzerland) Translation

PRO HELVETIA FELLOWSHIP FOR THE TRANSLATION OF A SWISS WORK

Translation project (French > German) L’amour du monde by French-speaking Swiss writer Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz

Steven Wyss, born in Thun in 1992, translates from French into German, notably works by Douna Loup, Jérémie Gindre, and C. F. Ramuz. For his translations of Ramuz's novels, he received a literary prize from the city of Zurich in 2023, followed by a literary creation grant from the canton of Zurich in 2024. In 2023, the city of Thun awarded him a cultural encouragement prize. He is also a literary mediator and facilitator and lives in Zurich.

IN RESIDENCE IN MAY 2026

From May 5th to June 1st, 2026

Nicolas Richard (France) Translation

GILBERT MUSY CTL / UNIL PROGRAM

Nicolas Richard has translated more than 130 English-language books into French, including works by Richard Brautigan, Thomas Pynchon, Miranda July, Woody Allen, Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen, Valeria Luiselli, Herna Diaz, and Quentin Tarantino. He received the Maurice-Edgar-Coindreau Prize in 2013 for his translation of Russell Hoban's novel Enig Marcheur (published by Monsieur Toussaint Louverture). He is the author of an essay on his experience as a translator: Par instants, le sol penche bizarrement (Robert Laffont, 2021). He has published several works of fiction, including La dissipation (Inculte, 2018), La chanteuse aux trois maris (Inculte, 2024), and Gunks, chronique du temps insouciant (Arthaud 2025). Together with musician Rubin Steiner, he is preparing a musical lecture entitled “Fernando Pessoa, traducteur, poète, farceur” (Fernando Pessoa, translator, poet, prankster).

Nora Amin (Egypt) Translation

LOOREN IN LAVIGNY French > Arabic

Nora Amin began her career as a translator in 1993, after graduating from the Faculty of Arts, Department of French Language and Literature. She was then appointed lecturer at the Cairo Academy of Arts, where she began publishing her translations as part of the region's most important international theater festival. A prolific author, she has published more than 24 books and is also a renowned director and choreographer. She has enriched Egyptian and Arabic literature with essential translations in the field of theater and theater studies and devotes herself mainly to translating plays by French playwrights into Arabic, notably the work of Marguerite Duras. At the Château de Lavigny, she is working on Le monstre by Ágota Kristóf .

Carlos Mayor (Spain) Translation

LOOREN IN LAVIGNY

French > Spanish

Since 1989, Carlos Mayor has translated or co-translated more than five hundred works by authors such as Andrea Camilleri, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, Somerset Maugham, Irène Némirovsky, Cesare Pavese, Gianni Rodari, Vita Sackville-West, Françoise Sagan, Marjane Satrapi, Edith Wharton, and Oscar Wilde, as well as six Nobel Prize winners: Albert Camus, Grazia Deledda, Rudyard Kipling, Doris Lessing, Toni Morrison, and John Steinbeck. He translates novels, essays, comic books, and children's books. He has received the National Translation Prize from the Italian Ministry of Culture, the Esther Benítez Prize, the Astrid Lindgren Prize, the Sophie Castille Prize, and the Antifaz Prize. He has been teaching translation since 1992. At the Château de Lavigny, he is working on La Pesanteur et la Grâce by Simone Weil.

Régis Quatresous (France) Translation

LOOREN IN LAVIGNY German > French

Régis Quatresous was born in France in 1991. He has been working full-time as a literary translator since 2018. His working languages are German, English, and, more recently, Russian. He has translated Reiner Stach's biography of Kafka and, more recently, Kafka's The Trial and Heinrich von Kleist's Anecdotes. At the end of 2025, he translated and directed the documentary play Sentiments inavouables en temps de guerre about the war in Ukraine, by the Ukrainian-Russian-German collective Mädchen vom Jupiter. He is currently working on the “war writings” of the Viennese satirist Karl Kraus. He is also a writer: his first collection of short stories, Nourritures, was published in early 2026.

Sarah Gurcel Vermande (France) Translation

LOOREN IN LAVIGNY English > French

Sarah Gurcel Vermande is a translator and actress, two professions that she feels are closely related and require the same skills, since both involve lending her voice to someone else's words. She performs in French and English, always in the theater, sometimes outside of theaters, and for the past ten years has been exploring the art of puppetry as an eternal beginner. She mainly translates British plays and American novels, but she is also the French translator for English-speaking authors from Libya, Egypt, Iran, and soon Sri Lanka. She regularly leads translation workshops in schools. At Château de Lavigny, she is working on Gather Up Your World in One Long Breath by S. Shakthidharan.

INRESIDENCE IN JUNE 2026

From June 2 to June 29, 2026

Salomé Kiner (Switzerland) Fiction

Salomé Kiner is a novelist and journalist. She is the author of Grande couronne (Christian Bourgois, 2021; Le Livre de poche, 2023) and contributed to the collective novel Le Retour du Roi Djibril (Ed. Iconoclaste, 2025). She regularly works with photographers and visual artists. She received the Prize Prix de la Relève from the Fondation vaudoise pour la culture in 2022.

This residency is supported by the State of Vaud

Nicolas Richard (France) Translation, fiction

GILBERT MUSY CTL / UNIL PROGRAM

Nicolas Richard has translated more than 130 English-language books into French, including works by Richard Brautigan, Thomas Pynchon, Miranda July, Woody Allen, Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen, Valeria Luiselli, Herna Diaz, and Quentin Tarantino. He received the Maurice-Edgar-Coindreau Prize in 2013 for his translation of Russell Hoban's novel Enig Marcheur (published by Monsieur Toussaint Louverture). He is the author of an essay on his experience as a translator: Par instants, le sol penche bizarrement (Robert Laffont, 2021). He has published several works of fiction, including La dissipation (Inculte, 2018), La chanteuse aux trois maris (Inculte, 2024), and Gunks, chronique du temps insouciant (Arthaud 2025). Together with musician Rubin Steiner, he is preparing a musical lecture entitled “Fernando Pessoa, traducteur, poète, farceur” (Fernando Pessoa, translator, poet, prankster).

Mark Sarvas (USA) Fiction

Mark Sarvas is the American Book Award-winning author of the novels MEMENTO PARK (FSG, 2018) HARRY, REVISED (Bloomsbury, 2008) and @UGMAN (ITNA Press, 2025). He was a finalist for the prestigious Sami Rohr Prize and won the 2019 AJL Fiction Award. His debut novel, HARRY, REVISED, was published in more than a dozen countries around the world. He has been awarded fellowships from Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Dora Maar Cultural Center, and the Hawthornden Foundation.

The winner will be announced shortly (Ireland) Fiction

This residency is supported by Literature Ireland

IN RESIDENCE IN JULY 2026

From June 30 to July 27, 2026

Dalia Al-Dujali (UK) Fiction

Dalia Al-Dujaili is a British-born Iraqi writer, editor, publisher and curator based in London. She is the online editor of British Journal of Photography, the founder of HIKMA Iraq and of The Road to Nowhere magazine. She has bylines in The Guardian, Dazed, GQ, The Face, Rolling Stone and more. She is the author of Babylon, Albion: A Personal History of Myth and Migration (2025, Saqi Books). She has been featured in Dazed – including on the Dazed100 – Vogue Arabia, AnOther, NY Magazine, PhotoVogue, Stylist and more. 

Paul M. Katz (UK/USA) Non-fiction, fiction

Paul Katz is a multi-Grammy-nominated producer, attorney, and author whose work bridges entertainment, culture, and social impact. He is the author of Good Influence, an award-winning Amazon #1 bestseller, and is completing a second nonfiction book, Commit Together: A Practical Field Guide to Reclaiming Democracy, scheduled for publication in 2026. The book is part of Commit Together, a pro-democracy initiative of the Advocacy Alliance.

Margit Mössmer (Austria) Fiction

Margit Mössmer (*1982) is a Vienna-based author and cultural educator. Her work focuses on deepening the understanding of literature, contemporary art, and dance. Following several grants for her literary work, she was awarded the Culture Prize of the Province of Lower Austria for her third novel Das Geheimnis meines Erfolgs (The Secret of My Success), a novel narrated from a child's perspective.

Rebecca Paley (USA) Non-fiction, fiction

Rebecca Paley is a New York Times number one best-selling author of memoirs. Her work has also appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Mother Jones, and ARTnews. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and children.  During her residency she will work on a new project, which borrows from the “genre” invented by W.G. Sebald, who mixed elements of history, biography, memoir, and fiction in his preoccupation with the Holocaust and WWII. 

Tonio Schachinger (Austria) Fiction

Tonio Schachinger (*1992) is an Austrian novelist. He studied German at the University of Vienna and Language Arts at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. His debut novel Nicht wie ihr was published in 2019 and shortlisted for the German Book Prize, which he then won with his second novel, Echtzeitalter in 2023.

To be announced (Switzerland) Fiction

Recipient of the Canton of Geneva writing grant

IN RESIDENCE IN AUGUST 2026

From July 28 to August 24, 2026

Egana Djabbarova (Azerbaijan) Poetry, fiction

Poet, writer, doctor, Egana Djabbarova was born and raised in Russia in an Azerbaijani family. Author of four poetry collections: ‘Bosphorus’, ‘Romberg's Pose’, ‘Red Alarm Button’ and ‘Rus Bala’. She has published three novels: The Hands of the Women in My Family Were Not for Writing (No Kidding Press, 2023), Dua for the Unfaithful (NLO, 2024) and Terra Nullius (NLO, 2025). She received the Hamburg Literary Prize for Book of the Year (2025). Since 2024, she has been living in exile in Germany.

This residency is supported by S. Fischer Stiftung

Baptiste Gaillard (Switzerland) Poetry, fiction

Baptiste Gaillard (1982) is a writer, artist and cultural mediator. He has exhibited in galleries and art spaces in Switzerland and Germany. He has published his writings in magazines, as well as several books, including Un domaine des corpuscules (Hippocampe éditions, 2017 – Swiss Literature Prize in 2018), Ombres blanches sur fond presque blanc (Héros-Limite/L’Ours Blanc, 2020), Un test de fragilité (Héros-Limite, 2024) and Baleinoïde (Askip, 2025). He also runs a micro-publishing project (serpula.li) and his texts have been translated into several languages, including a book in American English (In the realm of motes, Roof Books, 2025 – translated by Aditi Machado).

This residency is supported by the Canton of Vaud.

Vydia Gastaldon (Switzerland) Fiction

Vidya Gastaldon is a French-Swiss artist born in Besançon in 1974. She lives and works in Geneva, where she teaches at HEAD. Over the years, Vidya Gastaldon has developed a style reminiscent of hippie and psychedelic aesthetics, New Age and abstract minimalism. In the 1990s, she graduated from the Beaux-Arts in Grenoble, discovered raves and techno, and was taught meditation techniques. All these elements come together in her artistic practice. Her aesthetic displays representations of states of consciousness. Writing allows her to express her mystical understanding of the world.

This residency is supported by the Canton of Geneva.

The winner will be announced shortly (Catalonia/Spain)

This residency is supported by Ramon Llull Institute

IN RESIDENCE IN AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2026

From August 25 to September 21, 2026

Raoul de Jong (Netherlands) Fiction, memoir

Raoul de Jong (Rotterdam, 1984) is a leading voice in contemporary Dutch literature, blending memoir, fiction, history, and spiritual inquiry.

At nineteen he traveled across West Africa for four months, survived New York on fifty dollars, and later walked from Rotterdam to Marseille in honor of his dog Puck — journeys that inform his adventurous literary perspective.

This residency is supported by Dutch Foundation for Literature

Chloé Falcy (Switzerland) Fiction

Born in 1991, Chloé Falcy studied languages at the University of Lausanne. Alongside her literary activities, she works in publishing in Lausanne, where she lives. Published in 2017, her first novel, Balkis (Pearlbooksedition), won the Prix littéraire Chênois and was a finalist for the Prix des 5 continents de la francophonie and the Prix de la première œuvre littéraire francophone ADELF-AMOPA. In 2022, she was awarded the Canton of Vaud Writing Grant and received the 2025 City of Lausanne Prize for her novel La mécanique des ailes (Hélice-Hélas Editions, 2025).

This residency is supported by the City of Lausanne.

Tendai Huchu (Zimbabwe) Fiction

Tendai Huchu's first novel, The Hairdresser of Harare, was released in 2010 to critical acclaim. His work has appeared in 'Lightspeed', 'Interzone', 'Analog Science Fiction & Fact', 'The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021’, 'Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine', 'Mystery Weekly', 'The Year’s Best Crime and Mystery Stories 2016', and elsewhere. He is the winner of a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award (2023), Alex Award (2022), the Children’s Africana Book Award (2021), a Nommo Award for African SFF (2022, 2017), and has been shortlisted for the Caine Prize (2014) and the Grand prix de l'Imaginaire (2019). The fifth and final instalment of his Edinburgh Nights fantasy series titled Secrets of the First School was released in October 2025.

This residency is supported by Fondsculturelsud.

IN RESIDENCE IN SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026

From September 22 to October 19, 2026

Iryna Malyshko (Ukraine) Non-fiction

Iryna Malyshko is a Ukrainian writer, essayist, and philosopher. She is the author of several books, including War’s Notes of a Little Person. Her work focuses on war, memory, and the history of Eastern Ukraine. She is currently working on the documentary trilogy Frontier.

This residency is supported by S. Fischer Stiftung

Yulia Marfutova (Germany) Fiction

Yulia Marfutova was born in 1988 in Moscow, studied German philology and history in Berlin, earned her PhD in Münster, and now lives in the US. Her debut novel Der Himmel vor hundert Jahren was longlisted for the German Book Prize 2021. Her second novel Eine Chance ist ein höchstens spatzengroßer Vogel was published in 2025.

Anne Pitteloud (Switzerland) Fiction

Anne Pitteloud is a literary journalist and editor for Le Courrier newspaper. She has published a collection of short stories En plein vol (Ed. d’autre part, 2016) and a critical monograph entitled Catherine Safonoff. Réinventer l’île (Ed. Zoé, 2017), as well as short stories and poems in collective works. She hosts literary events and writing workshops, and is currently working on a novel.

This residency is supported by the State of Geneva

Lena Schätte (Germany)

Lena Schätte (*1993)  is a writer, literary mediator and psychiatric nurse from the Ruhr region of Germany. Her novel „Das Schwarz an den Händen meines Vaters“ was published in spring 2025 by S.Fischer Publishing. It deals with alcoholism in the family system, was longlisted for the German Book Prize, received the W.G. Sebald Literature Prize, and is currently being translated into six languages.