Writer’s Fellowship: Creating Grassroots Narratives, with Sky Islands
Sky Islands is an independent digital eco-publication and platform launched by The Kodai Chronicle Trust and based in the Western Ghats: one of the greatest and most threatened biodiversity hotspots on Earth. They seek to produce stories from this beautiful region digitally, in multiple mediums, informed by lived experience; showcase regional initiatives; and provide tools for interaction and navigating life in the hills.
Through this fellowship, Sky Islands have been training a writer to produce stories in text and images, in Tamil and English. Murugeshwari, the recipient of the fellowship, is a daily wage agricultural labourer, living in the Palani Hills’ Bharati Anna Nagar, near Kodaikanal, and she has been working with The Kodai Chronicle Trust for the last three years. Her writing has been published in The Kodai Chronicle, syndicated in Voices of Rural India and Adivasi Lives Matter, and anthologized in Between Heaven and Earth: Writings on the Indian Hills by Speaking Tiger.
Credits for cover image: The Kodai Chronicle