IN RESIDENCE IN AUGUST

July 23 - August 19, 2024

Sagou Banou (Mali) Film script

Originally from Mali, screenwriter and director Sagou Banou lives in Burkina Faso. After graduating with a Master's degree in Business Law from the University of Legal and Political Sciences in Bamako in 2013, he obtained a Bachelor's degree in Directing from the Institut Supérieur de l'Image et du Son in Ouagadougou. Sagou Banou has directed several short films, including "Mon Jour de Chance", which won first prize for best African film from film schools at the 2021 Ouagadougou Pan-African Film and Television Festival (FESPACO). During his stay at Lavigny, Sagou Banou will be working on the script for his first feature film “En Attendant la Récolte”.

This residency is supported by SüdKulturFonds

Khadija Bajaber (Kenya) Fiction

Khadija Abdalla Bajaber is a Kenyan writer and the author of The House of Rust which won the inaugural Graywolf Press Africa Prize and The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction. You can find her work at Enkare Review, A Long House, Lolwe, and Down River Road among others.

This residency is supported by Pro Helvetia Johannesburg

Claudia Schumacher (Germany) Fiction, non-fiction

Claudia Schumacher (*1986) is a writer based in Hamburg. She studied in Berlin, lived in Zurich for several years and worked as a journalist for DIE ZEIT, NZZ am Sonntag and Tages-Anzeiger, among others. Her debut novel "Liebe ist gewaltig" was nominated for numerous literary awards and was honoured as "Book of the Year" at the Hamburg Literature Awards 2022.

Bruno Pellegrino (Switzerland) Fiction

Born in 1988, Bruno Pellegrino lives in Lausanne. Winner of the Prix du jeune écrivain for his short story L'idiot du village (Buchet/Chastel, 2011), he has published four books with Éditions Zoé: Comme Atlas (2015), Là-bas, août est un mois d'automne (2018), which won the Prix des Libraires Payot and the Prix Écritures & Spiritualités), Dans la ville provisoire (2021, Prix Michel-Dentan and Prix Paysages écrits) and Tortues (2023). Bruno Pellegrino was active for ten years in the AJAR collective, author of Vivre près des tilleuls (Flammarion, 2016). Also with Zoé, he co-wrote the two seasons of the Stand-by literary series (2018 and 2019), as well as a "station novel", Terre-des-Fins (2022).

This residency is supported by the Foundation Ulricht and by Fondation Philanthropique Famille Sandoz

Anna Gual (Catalonia, Spain) Poetry

Anna Gual (Barcelona,1986) has proven herself time and again as one of Catalunya’s most vital poetic voices. From her first book, Implosions (2008), to her eighth, Les ocultacions (2022), Gual’s exploration of the minute to the exponential, of the daily to the eternal, and the singular ways she writes this exploration, continues to surprise and draw in poets, readers, and critics alike. Gual’s poetry has been translated into several languages.

This residency is supported by the Institut Ramon Lluil