Autumn in Almaty arrived with that particular Central Asian light that makes everything feel simultaneously ancient and immediate. The Almaty Writing Residency organized by OLSHA and IWP turned out to be less about writing in isolation and more about collision.
The trilingual format worked in English, Russian, and Kazakh, creating fascinating translation problems during workshops. Watching the same poem move through three linguistic frameworks showed how much meaning shifts in transit. Not lost exactly, but transformed into something that carries traces of all three languages simultaneously.
The residency’s theme this year focused on non-fiction and documentary poetry in search of Kazakhstani identity. Relevant timing for me, given Eastern Empire explores exactly these questions of identity formation at cultural intersections. The difference between observing these dynamics in London’s Chinatown versus experiencing them in Almaty where Soviet, Turkic, and contemporary global influences negotiate daily is substantial.
Christopher Merrill from IWP joined remotely, along with Polish researcher Krzysztof Hoffman. Their perspectives on Central Asian literature from outside the region provided useful friction against local viewpoints. Indian poet Sonnet Mondal visited in October for translation workshops, watching his work migrate into Kazakh for the first time.
What struck me most was how the city itself operates as trilingual text. Street signs layer Cyrillic and Latin scripts. Conversations slide between languages mid-sentence not from confusion but from precision. Certain concepts simply work better in specific linguistic contexts. This matches the cultural synthesis I’m writing about in Eastern Empire, where characters navigate between Beijing’s hierarchies and London’s networks.
The workshops pushed beyond comfortable creative writing territory into documentary approaches. How do you capture lived reality without flattening it into narrative convenience? Several Kazakhstani writers discussed the challenge of documenting recent history when official and personal memories diverge sharply.
Almaty’s literary infrastructure surprised me. The city hosts multiple active literary journals, OLSHA runs serious year-round programs, and writers here treat literature as essential cultural work rather than leisure activity. Different energy from London’s more professionalized publishing scene.
Spent afternoons walking through neighborhoods where Soviet apartment blocks stand next to contemporary glass structures, both coexisting with remnants of older architectural layers. Exactly the kind of spatial palimpsest that interests me for fiction. How past and present occupy the same territory without resolving into simple synthesis.
The residency format meant living and working in shared space with other writers for several weeks. This forces engagement you can’t replicate through occasional literary events. Daily proximity to Kazakh-language poets and Russian-language prose writers created ongoing conversation about what Kazakhstani identity even means when the country contains so many linguistic and cultural streams.
Left with clearer understanding of how writers in post-Soviet spaces navigate heritage, erasure, and emergence simultaneously. The research feeds directly into Eastern Empire’s exploration of cultural power dynamics, though I doubt I’ll write explicitly about Almaty. The city taught me something about how identity formation works when empire is both historical fact and present condition.
Worth noting: OLSHA provides full support including travel, accommodation, per diem. Serious institutional commitment to literature that deserves recognition.
Posted from London, still processing three languages worth of conversations.
— Writer Julia Zolotova
