Nonfiction

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.  

Selina Nwulu unpacks the impetus behind her debut essay collection, Black Climates – 'an exploration of climate breakdown through the lens of the Black experience' – where mainstream discourse has inadequately addressed how marginalised peoples are affected by the climate crisis.

Read an extract from So Mayer's forthcoming book, Bad Language, a blend of memoir and manifesto exploring the politics of speech, and how language has been used – and abused – collectively and in their own life. This extract is from a section titled 'Shibboleth' – 'a word that draws a border, and makes that border deadly' – in relation to the continued occupation of Palestine.

‘What becomes of gender and sexuality amidst the collapse of the liberal world order?’ In this essay, Dr Abeera Khan from SOAS, University of London’s Department of Gender Studies examines our current moment as one after homonationalism, where ‘the sparse and vanishing wages of inclusion lie exposed.’ 

We are honoured to publish Leila Aboulela's full acceptance speech for the PEN Pinter Prize 2025. Leila is a long-time friend of Wasafiri, having judged the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize in 2023. She named Stella Gaitano as Writer of Courage 2025.

We're delighted to share an exclusive extract from the forthcoming collection, We Are Each Other's Liberation: Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities, edited by Rachel Kuo, Jaimee A. Swift, and TD Tso. This extract is from an interview by Swift with Beverley Bryan and Stella Dadzie – founding members of the socialist and activist group, Organisation of Women of Asian and African Descent – on the joys and difficulties of political organising across race, class, and gender.

Read an extract from Sara Ahmed's forthcoming book, No is Not a Lonely Utterance: The Art and Activism of Complaining – on the various ways in which we can engage in complaint, refusal, and resistance with our dignity – including whistle-blowing, song, language, protest, and more.

Using the term 'amuk' as her starting point, Khairani Barokka roots out the violences in colonial mistranslation, weaving in disability justice and personal experience in this extract from Wasafiri 123.

In this photo essay, multimedia artist Myriam Louise Taleb elaborates on her evolving relationship to photography through memories of family photo albums, shooting in the UAE's private vs public spaces, and trying to find a sense of belonging in the country's creative scene.

In this exclusive extract, Yoko Tawada – translated by Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda – considers the place of categorisation in literature. Her own writing is housed variously under ’Japanese Literature‘, ’Women's Literature‘, and ’Literature of Colour‘, among others. Here, Tawada breaks down these artificial boundaries to see the words beneath.  

The first piece in our new Writing the Self, Writing Berlin series – led by our CHASE intern Divya Ghelani – is a personal essay by Divya, reflecting on her entwined experiences of producing both a novel and a baby via IVF while living in Berlin. She explores how this time transformed her ideas of anxiety, perseverance, and the act of creation.

Dalia Al-Dujaili writes about the inspiration and research behind her debut, Babylon, Albion, a nature-memoir exploring identity through the land-based mythologies of Britain and Iraq and family memories of migration.

Extracted from the lead feature in Wasafiri 122: The UAE Issue, this personal essay by Nadeen Dakkak charts her familiy's movements across the Gulf and beyond, reflecting on the ambiguity, silences, longing, nostalgia, and practicalities of serially migrating.

In this life writing piece shortlisted for the 2024 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize, Sarah Anjum Bari explores matrilineal relationships, patriarchal expectations, obedience, and rebellion for South Asian girls — and how hair can be at the root of it all.

In the first extract from Wasafiri 122: The UAE Issue, Mohamed Shafeeq Karinkurayil remembers watching the Berlin Wall fall on his television in Abu Dhabi's Madinat Zayed township — a place he spent several years of his childhood in, following his father's immigration from Kerala.

Wasafiri Associate Editor Thomas Glave pens a letter in tribute and grief for Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938-2025).

Both a novelist and translator, Anton Hur – Fiction judge for the 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize – discusses the varied experiences between writing and translating fiction, and how each role is treated in a book's production process.

In this candid, comprehensive essay drawing on her own career experiences, our outgoing 2024 Translator-in-Residence Sawad Hussain discusses the particularities – both the perks and drawbacks – of translating between Arabic and English, and the larger inequities between language pairs in the translation industry.

'This is the problem with anecdotes: they are so ambiguously weighted. They might say nothing or they might say everything' — Life Writing judge for the 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize, Noreen Masud, talks about the value of the anecdote when writing about one's life.

Ark Ramsay's Life Writing piece – shortlisted for the 2024 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize –  immerses itself in a knotty quest to 'outpace gender'.

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.

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.

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.

In this exclusive extract from Wasafiri 121, Professor Sunny Singh speaks about her experiences in navigating three adjacent spaces in the literary industry: creative writing, pedagogy, and publishing.