Wasafiri is proud to publish the 2023 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize shortlisted pieces. These poems, essays, and short stories detail a range of emotions and experiences, produced by promising new writers from all over the globe. In this life writing piece, Madeleine Ballard portrays the tenderness and the careful navigation of a mother daughter relationship.

This intimate fictional piece by Dushi Rasiah depicts the narrator's uncertainties, family secrets, and her own sense of identity culminating in a shared moment of compromise. 

Originally published in Wasafiri 118: Abolitions — Writing Against Abandonment, this piece of life writing, translated by Roba AlSalibi, powerfully deconstructs the themes of humanisation, freedom of Palestinian prisoners and people, and the abolition of prisons altogether.