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Latest Issue - Spring 2025
Wasafiri 121

Our spring issue explores the concept of the periphery from various perspectives. Edited by our former Deputy Editor, Durre Shahwar, this issue includes writing on the climate, body, justice, migration, translation, illustration, and much more. It also features the 2024 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize winners; a lead feature on Centring Justice by Professor Sunny Singh; interviews with Don Mee Choi and Claudette Johnson; and a review essay on Urdu literature in translation.  

About this issue

Featured Content

Abstract black ink scrawls painted on an egg white background
제. 타오르는 삶 [Burnt Offering] by SJ Kim
Braiding in readings of Don Mee Choi and Kim Hyesoon, this creative essay by SJ Kim reflects on translatability, Korean history, storytelling, patriarchy and femininity, and empire, through the performance piece Burnt Offering, performed by the 99ArtCompany in London last year.
Essay
Brixton Library, Brixton Oval on Windrush Square in July 2024.
Remembering Alex Wheatle by Irenosen Okojie
Novelist Irenosen Okojie writes a tribute to her former mentor and ‘literary titan’ Alex Wheatle, who passed away recently on 16 March, 2025. Known as the ‘Brixton Bard’, Wheatle was the author of several books set in South London, and was awarded an MBE for services to literature in 2008.
EssayArticles
Purple background showing five copies in a row of the book cover - which is an illustration of a range of old buildings
Exclusive Extract: Borrowing a Head by Abdoo Taj
In this surrealist short story set in Yemen's capital city, playfully satirising an oppressive society – written by Abdoo Taj and translated by Andrew Leber – men, quite literally, lose their heads. This story is part of The Book of Sana'a, the first major collection of Yemeni fiction in translation.
ExtractFiction
Painting of sunset and clouds above the sea horizon in Jamaica
Power Ballad Beach by Alex Mormoris
This life writing piece by Alex Mormoris – shortlisted for the 2024 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize – reflects on Jamaican diasporic experience and Windrush history, punctuated by the music of Tom Jones.
New Writing PrizeLife Writing
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Latest News and Events

Beige background. Photo on left of person with short brown hair and a denim shirt. Photo on right is woman with black hair and a fringe wearing a green scarf.
10 April 2025
Announcing the Winner and Highly Commended for the 2024 Wasafiri Essay Prize
We are thrilled to announce Ashley Barr as the winner of the 2024 Wasafiri Essay Prize for their work, ‘"Avert the Icy Feeling": Bhanu Kapil & Performing the Life of a Poet in White Spaces', while – in a first for the prize – Simar Bhasin has been awarded Highly Commended for her essay, 'A Qissa of Resistance: Desire & Dissent in Selma Dabbagh’s Short Fiction'.
24 March 2025
LAHP Placement Opportunity with Wasafiri
An opportunity is available for a LAHP-funded PhD student to join Wasafiri on a six-month placement. 
18 February 2025
An Afternoon with Gurnaik Johal
Join author Gurnaik Johal, in conversation with Wasafiri’s Editor and Publishing Director Sana Goyal, to discuss the short story form in relation to questions of literary value, readership, and prize culture. 
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