Team

Emeritus Professor at Queen Mary College, University of London, Susheila Nasta is a writer, presenter, literary activist, and critic.

Rishi Dastidar is a fellow of The Complete Works, and a consulting editor at The Rialto magazine. His poetry has been published by the Financial Times, New Scientist, and the BBC, amongst many others.

Dr Yvonne Battle-Felton is an author, academic, host, creative producer, and writer. She won the Northern Writers Award in fiction in 2017. Remembered, her debut novel, was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction (2019) and shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize (2020).

Kavita Bhanot is ECR Leverhulme Fellow at Leicester University. She wrote the landmark essay 'Decolonise not Diversify' in 2015. She has edited three short-story collections, including Too Asian, not Asian Enough and Book of Birmingham, and co-founded the Literature Must Fall collective and festival, with whom she organises reading groups and events.

Rachael Gilmour is a Lecturer in Postcolonial Studies at Queen Mary, University of London. Much of her research focuses on issues of language, translation, and linguistic encounter in colonial and postcolonial contexts from 18th- and 19th-century South Africa to contemporary multilingual Britain.

Michael Hammer is founder of the ROCsalt research and consultancy network and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Keele University. He takes a particular interest in the voice of civil society in the Global South, post-colonial power dynamics in international NGOs, as well as accountability and equity in the work of multi-lateral institutions.  

Anjali Ramachandran is a Director at Storythings, an audience research and content production company that works with clients like ADP, Global Payroll Association, Pearson, Tate, Francis Crick Institute, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and Shakespeare Folger Library. 

Florian Stadtler is Senior Lecturer in Literature and Migration at the University of Bristol. From 2010-2022 he was Reviews Editor of Wasafiri, after which he joined the Board of Trustees. He is an expert in British South Asian Film, History and Literature, as well as South Asian Writing and Indian Popular cinema.

Melanie Abrahams is the founder of the companies renaissance one and Tilt. She mentors emerging producers and lectures widely. She was the curator of Modern Love, a project exploring love and modern relationships which was nominated for an EMMA Award for Best Theatre/Play.

Ashok Bery is Senior Lecturer in English at the London Metropolitan University where he teaches Postcolonial Literature and Theory, Twentieth-Century British and American Poetry, Romantic Poetry and Poetic Forms and Genres. In 2000 he published Comparing Postcolonial Literatures: Dislocations (edited with Patricia Murray).

Elleke Boehmer is a writer, historian and critic. She is the author and editor of just under twenty books, including Stories of Women (2005), Postcolonial Poetics (2018), and a widely translated biography of Nelson Mandela (2008). Indian Arrivals 1870-1915:

Margaret Busby CBE, Hon. FRSL (Nana Akua Ackon) is a major cultural figure around the world. Her career has spanned work as a publisher, editor, interviewer, reviewer, scriptwriter, lyricist, radio and TV presenter, activist and mentor. 

Amit Chaudhuri was born in Calcutta and has published several prize winning novels as well as works of literary criticism.His work frequently appears in well known journals across the globe. His most recent publications include a collection of essays, Clearing A Space:

David Dabydeen is a writer, critic and historian who first became known for his prize-winning collection of Creole poems, Slave Song (1984). His first novel, The Intended, was published in 1991 followed by Disappearance (1993) and The Counting House (1996).

Denise DeCaires Narain is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities at the University of Sussex and has published widely on Caribbean women’s writing. Her book, Contemporary Caribbean Women’s Writing: Making Style was published in 2001 and she is currently working on a monograph on the Jamaican writer Olive Senior.

Robert Fraser is the author of several monographs, including studies of Sir James Frazer, Proust, Victorian quest literature and postcolonial fiction.

Maggie Gee joined the Wasafiri Advisory Board in 2004. She is the writer of eleven novels, a collection of short stories, The Blue, and a memoir, My Animal Life (2010). Born in Poole, Dorset, she was one of the original 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'.

Abdulrazak Gurnah has contributed to the development of Wasafiri from the beginning, working as a contributing editor since 1987. Born in Zanzibar, he left in the late 1960s and migrated to Britain. His first novel Memory of Departure, was published in 1987 and was quickly followed by Pilgrim’s Way (1988) and Dottie (1990).

Lyn Innes is Emeritus Professor of Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent, Canterbury. Born and educated in Australia, she moved to North America and developed her interest in cultural nationalism, focusing on Irish, African, African American and Caribbean literatures.

Maya Jaggi was formerly Literary Editor of Third World Quarterly. She is a well known and highly respected feature writer and lead reviewer on international literature for The Guardian.

Louis James is now Emeritus Professor at the University of Kent, Canterbury. In the 1960s he taught at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica, and published widely in the fields of Victorian, Modern and Caribbean literature.

David Johnson is senior lecturer at the Open University in English Literature. His publications include Shakespeare and South Africa (1996), Jurisprudence:

Mimi Khalvati was born in Tehran, Iran, grew up on the Isle of Wight and went to the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland. Having worked both as an actor and director in Britain and Iran, Khalvati founded Matrix, a women’s experimental theatre group and was co-founder of Theatre in Exile.

Gary McKeone was Literature Director at Arts Council England from 1995-2006. Before that he worked with Field Day Theatre Company in Ireland and at the Royal Festival Hall on London's South Bank.

Caryl Phillips is an internationally acclaimed writer whose work includes novels, television documentaries, and screenplays such as the adaptation of VS Naipaul’s The Mystic Masseur, for which he won the Silver Ombu for best screenplay at the Mar Del Plata Film Festival.

Minoli Salgado is a writer and academic who teaches English literature at the University of Sussex. Born in Malaysia, raised in Sri Lanka and South East Asia and educated mainly in England, she has published widely on migrant studies and diasporic literature. She is the author of Writing Sri Lanka:

Sukhdev Sandhu joined Wasafiri's Board in 2004 when he edited the highly regarded ‘Focus on Film’ issue (Winter 2004). Sandhu gained his doctorate from Oxford University and teaches at New York University.

Nikesh Shukla's debut novel, Coconut Unlimited, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award 2010. Alongside his second novel, Meatspace, Nikesh has written for The Guardian, Esquire, Buzzfeed, Vice and BBC2, LitHub, Guernica and BBC Radio 4. Nikesh is also the editor the bestselling essay collection…

Marina Warner CBE is an eminent and prolific cultural critic and writer. Her non-fiction publications include Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (1976), Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (1985), which won the Fawcett Book Prize, Signs and Wonders:

Karen McCarthy Woolf writes poetry, prose and radio drama. She is the editor of Bittersweet: Black Women’s Contemporary Poetry (1998) and Kin: New Fiction by Black and Asian Women (2004), both of which went on to form the basis of two nationwide tours.

Rehana Ahmed is Senior Lecturer in Postcolonial and Contemporary Literature at Queen Mary University of London.

Nadia Atia is a Reader in Postcolonial and Global Literature at Queen Mary University of London.

Lizzy Attree is the co-founder of the Safal Kiswahili Prize for African Literature.

Maya Caspari is a writer, curator, and lecturer at the University of York. Her forthcoming book is called Memory, Violence and the Politics of Touch in Contemporary World Literature. Her poetry has been published in journals including Poetry Review, Ambit, Butcher’s Dog and highly commended in the Forward Prizes.

Thomas Glave is the author of four books and the editor of an anthology, Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles. A two-time Fulbright Scholar, Glave's work has received numerous honours and awards.

Stephanie Jones is an Associate Professor in English at the School of Humanities, University of Southampton. She works on literature about marine and maritime worlds, with a particular focus on the Indian Ocean.

Nick Makoha was Shortlisted for the 2017 Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection for his debut poetry collection Kingdom of Gravity. He is a Cave Canem Graduate Fellow and Complete Works Alumni.

So Mayer is a writer, publisher, bookseller, organiser and film curator.

Zoë Norridge is a Reader in African and Comparative Literature and Visual Cultures at King’s College London. She researches cultural responses to the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, often in collaboration with Rwandan artists and survivors.

Naomi Wells is a researcher at the Institute of Modern Languages Research (School of Advanced Study, University of London). She researches on migration and multilingualism in Spanish- and Italian-speaking contexts, with a particular focus on everyday practices of linguistic and cultural translation.

Jennifer Wong is the author of Light Year (Nine Arches Press, 2026) and 回家 Letters Home (Nine Arches Press, 2020). She studied English at Oxford and has a PhD in creative writing from Oxford Brookes University.