Nonfiction

Armed with a BSc (Hons) in Economics from the London School of Economics, and a MA in Global Cinemas from the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), Asim Abbasi is a British-Pakistani film director, screenwriter, and producer.

In this piece for Global Dispatches, writer Robbie Arnott looks at the continued problem of emissions even during COVID-19 lockdowns.

Our winter 2020 issue – Wasafiri 104: Human Rights Cultures – makes space for South-South connections and conversations, focusing on four post-conflict countries – Kenya, Rwanda, Colombia, Argentina – bringing together the literatures that follow in the wake of war.

The Covid-19 pandemic has had an effect on us all, and we all have stories to share of our experiences within it. These are stories that only we can tell, in our own words.

Representing more of the globe than any other prize of its kind, the Queen Mary  Wasafiri  New Writing Prize is opening its doors for 2021 and welcoming work in fiction, poetry, and life writing from unpublished writers around the world.  The prize will remain open from 1 February to 31 May 2021 .

Urfi , I never came to stay. It’s just that it’s no longer as  simple as it was .   Then ,  the plan was straightforward: I was a visitor, just pass ing  through , embracing this land  of dreams  for a year.

L-R: Theresa Lola, Momtaza Mehri, Cecilia Knapp, Caleb Femi … Now in its fifth year, the Young People’s Laureate (YPL) for London is UK poetry’s third most prominent ‘office’, after the Poet Laureate and the Oxford Professor of Poetry.

Wasafiri  is excited to announce a series of online writing workshops tutored by our Writer-in-Residence Jennifer Wong, and  our  Associate Editor Thomas  Glave .  … Jennifer Wong's series of writing workshops will focus on poetry, human geography and writing across and between languages…

Applications for the 2021 Editor at Large programme are now closed. You can get to know more about our Editors at Large here.

Penny Green – Professor of Law and Globalisation, Head of the School of Law, Queen Mary, University of London – reflects on borders, racism and Myanmar's genocide and responds to Margarita García Robayo's 'From This Place on the Border', published as part of the Queen Mary Wasafiri Global Dispatches initiative, an essay series of exchanges and conversations between creative writers and academics. 

In this piece – translated by Carolina Orloff – Margarita García Robayo explores conversations around colourism within a family context. This piece is part of our Global Dispatches series.

We spoke to Billy Kahora and Zoë Norridge about curating, compiling, and commissioning Wasafiri 104, our special issue on Human Rights Cultures. You can read their print editorial, ‘What Is Seen and What Is Said’, and other free texts from the issue here.

What a year. As November shifts into December, and the eyes of the world turn backward – reviewing the last eleven months, and turn forward – looking ahead to what many of us hope will be something better, it's almost impossible not to fall into what are becoming 2020's analytical clichés:

Kiera Vaclavik – Professor of Children's Literature and Childhood Culture at Queen Mary, University of London – reflects on child-centred research during and post-pandemic and responds to Avni Doshi's 'Unfamiliar Creatures', published as part of the Queen Mary Wasafiri Global Dispatches initiative, an essay series of exchanges and conversations between creative writers and academics.

Read Avni Doshi's piece for Global Dispatches, on Covid-19 and childcare.

We're delighted to announce the appointment of our new Writer-in-Residence, the poet, writer, and translator Jennifer Wong.

Read an extract from an essay originally published in the catalogue for Scenes from the South (Makhanda: Amazwi South African Museum of Literature, 2020), an international travelling exhibition curated by Kai Easton (SOAS University of London) and David Attwell (York) in collaboration with Amazwi and the Harry Ransom Center (HRC), University of Texas at Austin.

This year, we’ve joined hands with Queen Mary, University of London Arts & Culture to work together on the ‘Global Dispatches’ initiative: an essay series of exchanges and conversations between creative writers and academics. 

Born in Jamaica in 1963, Claudia Rankine moved to the United States as a child. A poet, playwright, essayist, her work spans several decades, including Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric (2004), Citizen: An American Lyric (2014) and the play The White Card (2019).

My mother’s behaviour at Arab weddings would make the perfect audition video for RuPaul’s Drag Race, and the next one we attended together only confirmed her as the clear genetic foundation for my drag career. It was a cousin’s wedding, and this time it was happening in Mykonos in Greece.

Kadija Sesay (Chair), Simon Prosser (Fiction) (Photo credit: Sharron Wallace for Museum of Colour), Aida Edemariam (Life Writing), and Raymond Antrobus (Poetry) (Photo credit:

In an exclusive for Wasafiri, Sandeep Parmar and Anamik Saha discuss two reports that shook the publishing landscape in the UK, the state of publishing and reviewing, and what the future holds.

Cathy Park Hong is a Korean-American poet and essayist who is the author of three volumes of experimental poetry. Her most recent work is the non-fiction book, Minor Feelings:

She won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2017, then the BBC National Short Story Award in 2018. Now, Ingrid Persaud brings her most expansive, ambitious work yet. Love After Love has already generated international headlines.