Nonfiction

Isabella Peralta, who is part Filipino and Spanish, grew up in the Philippines on a former US naval base, consuming delightful varieties of Filipino foods and American media. In this evocative piece of life writing, she reminisces about her year working in Madrid, finding a sense of familiarity in instant ramen and an East Asian supermarket — a common, comforting presence for Asians living in global metropolitan cities. In the face of homesickness, dislocation, and growing anti-Asian sentiment, Peralta's experiences as an ethnically ambiguous, hybrid Filipino woman in Spain reflect how foods, objects, memories, smells, and tastes can furnish a sense of home across racial, linguistic, and geographical barriers. With an illustration by Simone Khanyi Hadebe.

Irish translator and scholar Ellen Corbett explores how some Irish writers have resisted or deferred the translation of their work into English — given the minoritisation of the Irish language and its 'definitely endangered' status. Unpacking the tumultuous, colonial history between the two languages, Corbett examines the varying stances of non-compliance poets like Biddy Jenkinson and Louis de Paor have taken in the past. What does this mean for Irish writers and translators today, who must tussle between greater international recognition and market reach, and preservation and authenticity?

Dantaé Garee Elliott explores the work of visual artist and author Rubén H Bermúdez, specifically his photobook Y tú, ¿por qué eres negro? (And You, Why Are You Black?) and documentary, A todos nos gusta el plátano, which record self-representation of the Black diaspora in Spain — a country where whiteness is positioned as the norm.  This is an extract from Wasafiri 126: Impossible Returns — The Spain Issue.

In this vulnerable piece of life writing teeming with a distinct sense of voice, Mistale Taylor writes about her epilepsy and how each episode leaves her finding her way back to herself. Woven through past instances of her seizures are musings on the language, art, treatment, and wording around being an epileptic woman — 'for the past fourteen years, part of me has been trying to assign something meaningful to the condition.'  This piece was shortlisted for the 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize.

Our Writer in Residence Cara Thompson reflects on her position as a 'nature poet' in her journey to becoming Nottingham's inaugural Nature Poet Laureate. Pushing back against the bucolic, idealised, and privileged forms of nature writing she encountered in her schooling in the UK, she reclaims and redefines the genre on more inclusive terms. 

In this essay, Deepa Bhasthi defends untranslatability – the intentional choice to not-translate text – as a necessary practice. As examples, she draws on Kannada words that feel too complex or hyperlocal to be translated into a single English word, as well as significant books she read during her time as our inaugural International Translator in Residence. Written by Jamil Jan Kochai, Waguih Ghali, and SJ Kim, these texts deliberately do not translate/transliterate certain words into English, and Bhasthi unpacks the aesthetic and political impacts of these choices.

Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse is a prolific Rwandan writer critically acclaimed in the French-speaking world; her work significantly contributes to the literature on witnessing genocide in Rwanda and beyond. Here, she speaks with Zoë Norridge – Wasafiri Associate Editor and academic at King's College London – about her early reading influences in Rwanda and France, the role of writing today at a time of heightened conflict, and how she supports survivors of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi to share and publish their stories. This conversation includes additional material from Beata and Zoë's original interview published in print in Wasafiri 125.

In this meticulously argued essay, Anita Barton-Williams dissects the reductive, extractive practices prevalent in the market for Caribbean literature, particularly what is lost or harmed when works are translated from Creole into Western colonial languages like French and English. She further explores how a translator may become a better 'bridge', espousing the possibilities for Creole-Creole translations as a way of strengthening Caribbean relationality and solidarity overall.

'What would a literary opposition to violence even sound like?' The 2026 PEN Lecture was delivered by the renowned English writer Max Porter on 29 April 2026. In a speech almost entirely framed as a series of questions, he urges us – particularly writers and literary practitioners – to genuinely reckon with our complacencies at a time of ongoing war and genocides stoked by heightened militarism, fascism, patriarchy, and technocapitalism. What does peace even mean in a world like this? What can it possibly look like, how can it come into being? 'Are we only allowed to dream of profit, victory, security, defence?'

Jen Calleja is the Life Writing judge for the 2026 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize. In this essay, she shares the inspiring roadmap that led to the creation of her memoir, Fair: The Life-Art of Translation, and the importance of embarking on a wide-ranging, deep, and unique research journey for creating your own work of life writing.

Read an extract from Imani Perry's Black in Blues: How a Colour Tells the Story of My People (Allen Lane, 2026). Drawing from her own experiences, global history, and encounters with music, literature, and art, Perry traces how Blackness and the colour blue have been entwined for centuries — from the West African dyed indigo cloths that were once traded for human life, to American blues music, to Toni Morrison's writing, and more. 

This life writing piece by Dani Salvadori is a work of prose-poetry about the 'menoflân' – an older, menopausal flâneuse – moving through a ceaseless, beating city such as London, where 'the grammar of the city is movement'. As she slips through various streets and situations, the menoflân asserts a profound understanding and possession of the place she is in. This piece was shortlisted for the 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize.

Ariel Saramandi explores and decries the patriarchal abuses of power behind the Mauritian literary scene, centring Nathacha Appanah's groundbreaking book, La nuit au cœur, and her and other Mauritian women writers' engagements with violence against women, confinement, and carcerality on the island. Where femicide and paedophila remain major issues for the country, Saramandi looks toward how effective feminist shifts can continue to take hold in the future.

Amid rising fascism and anti-Muslim sentiment in India, this essay by Anu Khosla examines three recent books – Quarterlife by Devika Rege, Saraswati by Gurnaik Johal, and Zara Chowdhary's The Lucky Ones – and their depictions of the seeping, violent ideologies of Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism. This is an extract from our Spring 2026 issue, Wasafiri 125.

Indian novelist Santanu Bhattacharya is the Fiction judge for the 2026 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize. In this essay, he shares his guidance on staying true to the global majority story you want to tell, based off his own experiences and reflections as a published author in an industry that continues to greedily capitalise on 'diversity'.

Palestinian writer Malak N Hijazi's life writing piece reflects on growing up in Gaza — the realities of white phosphorus raining down on your school, watching the weight fall rapidly off your body, losing a childhood friend, noting the olive-coloured eyes of a soldier. Existing here means existing 'in disappearance', amid the systematic extermination of your people. This piece was Highly Commended for the 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize.

Esther King finds kinship in Argentine British poet Leo Boix's Southernmost: Sonnets about the experiences of migration and living between multiple cultures and languages. She reflects on the 'push and pull of belonging to different places' and how that has shaped her understandings of home, geography, partnership, family, and grief.

In Raluca David's life writing piece, colonies of mould settle into her family's various apartments – from the UK to Germany – mirroring a growingly hostile, anti-immigrant atmosphere. This piece was shortlisted for the 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize.

Moving between cities, memories, basements, and screens, Kareena Gianani's life writing piece explores what long-distance love can look like in a globalised world — where migration becomes a constant, smartphones shape relationships, and rooms gather meaning the more that they change. Through her own personal narrative, Kareena imagines alternative templates for the ways in which women are allowed to move, work, love, marry, and be. 

Can a group of grassroots campaigners collaborate with a 140-year-old trade union that is resistant to change? In this essay, Martin Reed and Noreen Masud identify the tensions between grassroots activism and established union structures, discussing the challenges to labour activism in the creative industries. They specifically examine the Society of Authors, one of the UK’s largest trade unions for creators, from their perspectives as members of the bookworkers collective, Fossil Free Books. 

In the final entry in our Writing the Self, Writing Berlin series (conceived by Divya Ghelani), Berlin-based journalist Gouri Sharma reflects on Aria Aber's Good Girl (Bloomsbury, 2025), a cathartic bildungsroman of a young Afghan woman living in Berlin. As a reporter and a South Asian immigrant herself – 'a racialised woman caught between worlds' – Gouri explores the book's impact on her own understanding of grief, sexuality, pain, and politics.

The AWETHU School of Organising is the first programme of its kind in the UK teaching young people effective methods for political and community organising, while centring Climate Justice and Black Liberation. In this piece, Jess Mally – who co-founded the organisation with Mikaela Loach in 2022 – dives into AWETHU’s origins, methods, and mission, as well as their own journey as an organiser, asserting that our hope and actions must be interconnected as much as our struggles are.

In this moving tribute – with an accompanying visual travelogue spanning South Africa and Scotland – Kai Easton explores the legacy of late South African writer, Zoë Wicomb, reflecting especially on her relationship to photography.

Illustrated with her own personal experiences, Nathalie Teitler draws on the work of British Latinx writers Juana Adcock, Yara Rodrigues Fowler, Patrizia Longhitano, and Marina Sánchez to explore the physicality of women's writing, migration, (dis)embodiment, pain, and more. This is an extract from the Lead Feature essay in Wasafiri 124: Presencia y Resistencia – British Latinx Writing & Art.