Academic

Brazilian writer, translator, and literary scholar Natalia Borges Polesso discusses how the composition of gender-dissident, racialised, and/or sick characters in fiction come together to imagine possible ends of the world – and therefore possible new worlds – by breaking normative expectations. Polesso reflects on the narrative choices in her own books, as well as the wider political changes that have occurred in recent years in Brazil, particularly the Bolsonaro regime's crackdown on queer and other marginalised communities and ideas as 'deviant' and 'dangerous'.

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.

Last year, Angelique Golding – a PhD student working on the Wasafiri archives – shared an essay examining the illustrious forty-year history of Wasafiri. For her second installment, she revisits the archive to focus on the changing nature of archival materials and what we might gain – or lose – in transitioning from physical to digital.

Angelique Golding – a PhD student on the Wasafiri archives, based at Queen Mary University of London – leads us on an enlightening journey through Wasafiri’s history, trajectory, editorial strategy, and vision over forty years.