Forty years ago, the Tamil writer Ashokamitran spent a few months at the International Writing Programme (IWP) at the Univerity of Iowa. A decade later, he wrote a book about his experiences called Mole! (English translation by N Kalyan Raman).

Not every Indian writer who has been to the IWP has written a novel about it, otherwise libraries would have to dedicate an entire shelf to the sub-genre. (I won’t make a list, but will point you to http://iwp.uiowa.edu/residency/participants-by-region/India.) But I imagine the temptation to convert the experience into something more durable is hard to resist. I know my notebooks are filling up with words and my camera with images.