Exclusive Extract: Evenings in Diaspora by Sylvia Alajaji
In this exclusive life writing excerpt from Wasafiri 120: Armenia(n)s – Elevation, Sylvia Alajaji explores the emotional, historical, and cultural nuances of Armenian diasporic existence, interweaving personal memories with collective ongoing struggles, and drawing on music as a medium of cultural preservation and identity.
ExtractLife Writing
In the Ground of Memory by Mica Montana Gray
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.
New Writing PrizeLife Writing
She and I by Madeleine Ballard
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.
Life Writing
Listed for Sale by Kayte Ferris
This life writing piece by Kayte Ferris explores past relationships and the impact of life choices through a series of items 'listed for sale'.
New Writing PrizeLife Writing
Promise Me, O Women by Sadia Khatri
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.
EssayLife Writing
The Salt in the Air by Haniya Habib
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.
Life Writing
Season by Rebecca Tamás
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.
Life Writing
Syncretic Spaces: On Wendy Nanan by Olga U Herrera
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.
Life Writing
A World Within Walls by Sophie Jai
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:
Life Writing
Inheritance by Dur e Aziz Amna
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.
Life Writing
Death Comes in Threes by Damion Spencer
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.
Life WritingNew Writing Prize
The Prediction by Dal Kular
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.
Life WritingNew Writing Prize
Wrecking Ball: Conversing with Gina Miller by Maria del Pilar Kaladeen
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.
Life WritingExtract
Hazel and Fiver by Shamini Sriskandarajah
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.
Life WritingNew Writing Prize
The Books That Didn't Make Me by Jessica Gaitán Johannesson
In this piece, Wasafiri’s Writer-in-Residence, Jessica Gaitán Johannesson, interrogates the books that have – and haven’t – shaped her.
Life WritingWriter in Residence
'The poetics of skin': Kayo Chingonyi's Introduction to 'More Fiya'
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.
Life WritingExtract
Futures: African Imaginings by Irenosen Okojie
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.
Global DispatchesLife Writing
The Song of Life by Usha Rungoo
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.
Life WritingNew Writing Prize
‘Discontent, Spray Paint and Desire’: On Trans Literary Activism
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.
Life WritingExtract
Thoughts on a Pandemic Book Club: An Illustrated Essay
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.
ArticlesLife Writing
strangers, dreaming by Katherine Agyemaa Agard
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.
Global DispatchesLife Writing
On Evil (Crime in the Academy)
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.
Life Writing
An Extract from 정 by S J Kim
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.
Life WritingExtract
A Carry-On Full of Pictures and Letters
Heba Hayek is a London-based writer born and raised in Gaza, Palestine.
Life WritingExtract