In 2019, Priya Hein was selected for the Women’s Creative Mentorship Project by the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program as an emerging writer.

Back then, Hein, a native of the beautiful island nation Mauritius, located in the Indian Ocean of the coast of Eastern Africa, had written children's books, short stories, and a few texts that had been selected in anthologies.

Collaborating with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the International Writing Program (IWP) launched the Women’s Creative Mentorship Project, which focused on mentorship between young, emerging female writers, and female IWP fall residency alumni. This inaugural project began with a 4-day in-person conference in Portland, Oregon.

“It was just fantastic. We had the pleasure of meeting (IWP Director) Chris (Merrill) and (IWP Executive Associate Director of Operations) Cate (Dicharry),” Hein recalls. “It was an eye-opener for me. We were meeting with publishers, editors, translators, literary agents, and writers from all over the world. This made me realize that if I wanted to write in English and be published in English, I needed a literary agent, and was very lucky to sign up with a prominent one shortly after the mentorship program.”

Now, in 2024, Hein is again affiliated with the IWP as an award-winning writer in the Fall Residency Program on the campus of the University of Iowa in Iowa City. 

Hein 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). 

“I've been dreaming about this since (the mentorship program), hoping that I would be selected for the Fall Residency Program,” Hein says. “Among the international writing community, this is one of the most prestigious residency programs. If you look at the past participants, there are so many writers whom I admire.”

Debut book is an award-winner

Hein’s debut manuscript Riambel was written in English and translated into French by Haddiyyah Tegally, another 2019 IWP mentee from Mauritius. The manuscript won the 2021 Jean Fanchette Prize, chaired by J.M.G Le Clézio, winner of a Nobel Prize for literature. The Jean Fanchette Prize is an award created to encourage literary creations by French-speaking writers from Mauritius, Rodrigues, Reunion, Madagascar, the Comoros, and the Seychelles.

Riambel, published in French by Éditions Globe (Paris) in 2022 and The Indigo Press (London) in 2023, is named after a small fishing village in Mauritius. The reader follows teenage protagonist Noemi, who lives in the shanties of the village, and must leave school to help her mother, who works as a housekeeper for one of the island’s richest white families.

Only 160 pages, this novel deals with racism, colonial powers, slavery, and intergenerational trauma, especially suffered by women.

Hein’s first non-children’s book was written in vignettes in an unconventional and nonconformist style. The book contains recipes, poems, and songs, and although it is written in English, it also includes words in French, Malagasy, Bhojpuri and Creole, to reflect the island’s linguistic diversity. Some chapters also are only a few words long.

Hein drew inspiration for writing the book following African American man George Floyd’s death at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 2020.

Home in Munich, Germany, at the time, Hein’s emotions ran high as she watched people worldwide on both sides of the issue protesting Floyd’s death. This was the time for her literary voice to be heard.

“I thought it was the right time to talk about my own experiences as a woman immigrant living in Germany at the time,” Hein says. “But I was discouraged from speaking. There were microaggressions – disturbing comments – that I let pass by over the years. Writing this book was my way of protesting, because I didn't want to be silenced and so I decided to use my pen instead. I just wanted to write everything I couldn’t speak about in a way that was raw and unfiltered, but from a different perspective. I did not want to conform or follow any rules as I wrote. 

“With Riambel, I was experimenting with a new style of writing and testing literary boundaries the same way I was questioning historical and social boundaries in the story. This was originally meant to be for me, to be able to channel my emotions, because the book came from a feeling of anger.”

In Riambel, Noemi is a descendant of the former enslaved who used to work on the sugar plantations, which illustrates how the legacy of colonialism continues to influence the island today.

“The vestiges of colonialism still impact our daily lives.,” says Hein, who has published books in English, French, German, Mauritian Creole, and Rodriguan Creole. “I felt compelled to write in a way I had never written in my entire life. I don’t know if I will ever be able to write like this again.”

Hein uncharacteristically needed only five days to write the first draft of her debut manuscript. When she finished the draft, her husband and teenage daughter were encouraging with their feedback. Her daughter was shocked by some of the passages, while her husband and her cousin called her literary work powerful, which eventually prompted Hein to submit the manuscript to the Jean Fanchette competition,

“There's a graphic scene about a backstreet abortion which distressed my daughter who cried and said, 'This is just heart wrenching,”' Hein says.

Welcome back to the IWP

The United States Embassy in Mauritius nominated Hein for this fall’s residency program. She has joined 31 other writers from around the world, who share their texts with each other and the Iowa City community in a series of public events.

“It feels surreal to be here” Hein says. “All the previous IWP residents I spoke with told me that it's going to be the most amazing literary experience of my life. I feel privileged to be in Iowa City, the UNESCO City of Literature, surrounded by books.

“I look forward to conducting research for my new novel during my residency and finalizing my second novel (called Tamarin) which will be published in the UK by The Indigo Press next year.”