The Wasafiri Team
Sana Goyal
Editor & Publishing Director
Sana Goyal is the Editor and Publishing Director of Wasafiri. She has an MA in Postcolonial Studies and a PhD in literary prizes from SOAS, University of London. She was formerly Deputy Editor at Wasafiri, Publicity Manager at Tilted Axis Press, and Marketing and Outreach Officer at Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal. Her reviews have appeared in The Guardian, Financial Times, Times Literary Supplement, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Poetry Review, Vogue India, and elsewhere. She was a judge for the 2022 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and 2023 Republic of Consciousness Prize and is a judge for the 2025 International Booker Prize.
Elizabeth Robertson
Administration & Programmes Manager
Elizabeth has a background working in arts organisations focusing on new writing, project management, and live literature events.
Durre Shahwar
Deputy Editor
Durre Shahwar is a writer and Deputy Editor of Wasafiri. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Cardiff University on autofiction and marginalised identities. She is the co-editor of Gathering, an essay anthology of nature writing by women of colour (2024, 404 Ink). Her work has appeared in Know Your Place: Essays on the Working Class (2017, Dead Ink Books), We Shall Fight Until We Win (2018, 404 Ink), Welsh (Plural) (2021, Repeater Books) and others. Durre is working on her first book of narrative non-fiction, a sample of which was shortlisted and highly commended for the Morley Lit Prize. Durre was formerly a Writer-in-Residence at Wasafiri. Read her story, ‘The Golden Books’, first published in Wasafiri 112: Reimagining Education, which is available to purchase in the Wasafiri shop.
Cassie Lawrence
Digital Co-ordinator
Cassie Lawrence is a journalist and content editor working with Wasafiri on our 40th Anniversary projects. She has worked for various literary organisations with a global outlook, including Saqi Books and Asia House.
Leon Wainwright
Art Editor
Leon is Professor of Art History at The Open University. Along with a range of edited and co-edited books on modern and contemporary art and aesthetics, museums and curating, cultural policy and anthropology, he is the author of Timed Out: Art and the Transnational Caribbean (Manchester 2011) and Phenomenal Difference: A Philosophy of Black British Art (Liverpool 2017).
Farah Ali
Reviews Editor
Farah Ali (she/her) is the writer of the novel, The River, The Town and the short-story collection, People Want to Live. Her work has been anthologised in the Pushcart Prize and the Best Small Fictions, and has appeared in Shenandoah, Kenyon Review, Ecotone, Virginia Quarterly Review and elsewhere. She is the cofounder of Lakeer, an online journal from Pakistan. She lives in London where she writes and edits.
Sophia Arnold
CHASE Intern
Sophia Arnold is a CHASE-funded PhD Candidate in the Department of English at the University of Kent in collaboration with the human rights organisation, Incomindios UK. Her research explores art and artistic practice within Indigenous-led environmental justice campaigns and movements in North America.