Life Writing

Wasafiri is proud to publish the 2023 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize shortlisted pieces. These poems, essays, and short stories detail a range of emotions and experiences, produced by promising new writers from all over the globe. In this life writing piece, Mica Montana Gray reconstructs family history through memories and stories, highlighting the importance of honouring and remembering one's past as a bridge to the present.

Wasafiri is proud to publish the 2023 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize shortlisted pieces. These poems, essays, and short stories detail a range of emotions and experiences, produced by promising new writers from all over the globe. In this life writing piece, Madeleine Ballard portrays the tenderness and the careful navigation of a mother daughter relationship.

This life writing piece by Kayte Ferris explores past relationships and the impact of life choices through a series of items 'listed for sale'.

A deeply moving and measured piece of life writing, which lays bare the experience of abortion and its aftermath. With an arresting narrative voice, Karachi-based writer Sadia Khatri explores questions around gender, ritual, and remembrance amid the refrains of grief.

Wasafiri is pleased to publish the pieces shortlisted for the 2022 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize. The poems, essays and short stories in this series showcase the best new writing from the best new writers across the globe — in all their diversity and complexity. In Haniya Habib's evocative piece of life writing, she examines the passing of time both within a person's life, and within relationships.

In this exclusive extract from 'Season' by Rebecca Tamás, a slow, moving meditation on ritual and the nonhuman life which opens our spring issue, Wasafiri 113, we see the seasons change – from spring to summer – during the early days of the pandemic.

In this visual essay, including exclusive photos, Olga U Herrera explores the work of Wendy Nanan, and her dedication to capturing the nuances of her own life and the world around her.

In this lyrical, layered essay, author Sophie Jai examines the experience of writing and publishing her debut novel Wild Fires , and the ways in which history resonates on through centuries and generations. Wasafiri 110:

In this fluid, lyrical piece of life writing, Dur e Aziz Amna reflects on a study abroad program in Paris, and in doing so, interrogates the idolisation of canons, her longing for literary forefathers, and the ideas and forces that went into creating her debut novel, American Fever.

Wasafiri is proud to publish the shortlisted works of the 2021 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize. These poems, essays, and short stories detail a range of emotions and experiences, produced by skilled new writers from all over the globe.

Wasafiri is proud to publish the shortlisted works of the 2021 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize. These poems, essays, and short stories detail a range of emotions and experiences, produced by skilled new writers from all over the globe.

In 2016, when Gina Miller challenged the government's authority to trigger Article 50 to leave the EU, it catapulted her into the public eye, and resulted in a stream of misogynistic and racist abuse.

Wasafiri is proud to publish the shortlisted works of the 2021 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize. These poems, essays, and short stories detail a range of emotions and experiences, produced by skilled new writers from all over the globe.

In this piece, Wasafiri’s Writer-in-Residence, Jessica Gaitán Johannesson, interrogates the books that have – and haven’t – shaped her.

Twenty-four years after the publication of The Fire People –  the 1998 seminal collection curated by Lemn Sissay – comes More Fiya , an anthology of Black British poetry curated by poet and scholar Kayo Chingonyi.

In the next essay in our Queen Mary Wasafiri Global Dispatches series, author Irenosen Okojie writes about the initiative that Africans are showing as they fight for community health and survival during the climate crisis.

Wasafiri is proud to publish the shortlisted works of the 2021 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize. These poems, life writing pieces, and short stories detail a range of emotions and experiences, produced by skilled new writers from all over the globe.

In this exclusive extract from Wasafiri 109, Nat Raha, Sabah Choudrey, C N Lester, and Roz Kaveney discuss how in the face of racial capitalism, literature and community can act as a lifeline of connection and creative expression for trans and non binary people.

In this warm and engaging personal essay, writer Divya Ghelani reflects on the strength and confidence she found by starting a reading group for contemporary novels by BIPOC authors.

In the latest instalment of the Queen Mary and Wasafiri essay series, Global Dispatches, novelist Katherine Agyemaa Agard writes on dreams, solitude, and touch – both physical and imagined.

In this powerful, experimental personal essay, Elizabeth Chakrabarty writes about her decision to leave academia in order write fiction, and how the traditional narrative arc of a crime novel created space for her recovery.

S J Kim was born in Korea and raised in the American South, and is a Lecturer in Creative and Critical Writing at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Heba Hayek is a London-based writer born and raised in Gaza, Palestine.

Isabel Hofmeyr and Charne Lavery, colleagues from the Oceanic Humanities for the Global South project based in Johannesburg, attended a conference of the Standing Committee on Humanities and Social Sciences (SC-HASS) of the international Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) in Ushuaia…