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Victoria Adukwei Bulley interviews poet Mantra Mukim about his debut collection, Glitchwork (the87press, 2026). They discuss the grid or mesh as a form of poetics; a failed moon landing thwarted by unexpected error that informed Mukim's writing; other inspirations from visual art and music, like Nasreen Mohamedi and Aphex Twin; and the influences of growing up in the industrial and forest landscapes of Central India.

Read an excerpt from Chapter One of Shady Lewis's third novel, A Brief History of Creation and Eastern Cairo (Dar Elain, 2021), translated by Katharine Halls. The novel is set in a modest middle-class neighbourhood of the titular city, and its story unfolds over the course of a single day, against the backdrop of real-life events that took place in the 1980s. In this chapter, the narrator introduces us to his home and family members.  

Isabella Peralta, who is part Filipino and Spanish, grew up in the Philippines on a former US naval base, consuming delightful varieties of Filipino foods and American media. In this evocative piece of life writing, she reminisces about her year working in Madrid, finding a sense of familiarity in instant ramen and an East Asian supermarket — a common, comforting presence for Asians living in global metropolitan cities. In the face of homesickness, dislocation, and growing anti-Asian sentiment, Peralta's experiences as an ethnically ambiguous, hybrid Filipino woman in Spain reflect how foods, objects, memories, smells, and tastes can furnish a sense of home across racial, linguistic, and geographical barriers. With an illustration by Simone Khanyi Hadebe.

Irish translator and scholar Ellen Corbett explores how some Irish writers have resisted or deferred the translation of their work into English — given the minoritisation of the Irish language and its 'definitely endangered' status. Unpacking the tumultuous, colonial history between the two languages, Corbett examines the varying stances of non-compliance poets like Biddy Jenkinson and Louis de Paor have taken in the past. What does this mean for Irish writers and translators today, who must tussle between greater international recognition and market reach, and preservation and authenticity?

We spoke to María del Pilar Kaladeen and Marta Fernández Campa about guest co-editing Wasafiri 126: Impossible Returns — The Spain Issue, which explores racialised and migrant existences in Spain that are intentionally overlooked in favour of more white, ethnonationalist narratives of the country. They discuss their deeply intentional process of putting the issue together, intersectionality, colonial and historical memory, editing at a time of catastrophe, and more. 

For the Venezuelan poet Adalber Salas Hernández, 'poems are not unlike the microorganisms that act as his diminutive muses,' writes his translator from Spanish, Arthur Malcolm Dixon. Four such poems are presented here in both languages, where the reader is immersed in imagery from the Bible alongside observations of tiny living forms. Accompanied by a translator's note from Dixon, these poems become a meditation on the complexities of life at both large and small scales, between the tangible and intangible.

In this short story by Safia El Aaddam – translated from Spanish by Ian Farnes and Layla Benitez-James – a chance encounter with an old friend in a waiting room sets off a chain of memories for the protagonist. To protect themselves from being ridiculed in school, the two girls once concocted new fictional identities for themselves in their childhood — hiding the truth of their migrant and economic hardships. This is an extract from Wasafiri 126: Impossible Returns — The Spain Issue.

Our 2026 International Writer in Residence Safia Elhillo speaks to us about her reading lists, writing rituals and practices, what 'global solidarities' means to her, valuable advice she has received as a writer, and more in this new interview. Stay tuned for more news on Safia's residency, including upcoming workshops and new writing from the renowned Sudanese American poet, author, and editor.

Indigenous Mexican poet Irma Pineda writes both in Spanish and Didxazá, one of the variants in the Zapotec language family. Here, read four of her bilingual poems in Didxazá and Spanish from her 2020 collection, Nasía racaladxe' / Azul anhelo [Blue Longing], based on Pineda's interviews with women who were victims of domestic violence in her hometown Juchitán in Oaxaca, Mexico. The poems – the first two of which are untitled – are presented first in Didxazá (also known as Isthmus Zapotec), then Spanish, followed by their English translation by Wendy Call. They are accompanied by an additional translator's note by Wendy Call, reflecting on Pineda and Call's long-term collaboration.

In this short story by Emma Oldham, the Australian sun is its own overbearing, brutal character, beating down especially on poorer and Aboriginal communities. The story follows the narrator's relationship to the heat and her complicated, uneven entanglement with a richer white man, who offers both 'pleasure and climactic relief' in his air-conditioned home. This piece was shortlisted for the 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize.

In this excerpt from Lee Langvad's novel My Interpreter – translated from Danish by Hazel Evans – an adoptee narrator who lives in Denmark goes for a meal at her biological family's home in South Korea. During the visit, an interpreter must translate between her and her parents. The resulting (mis)understandings, beats, and silences manifest physically in the text's form.

In this interview with Ellah Wakatama, Chair of the Judges of the 2026 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize, she discusses the role of literary prizes, the importance of translated literature, and the qualities that make a creative work stand out for her.

Dantaé Garee Elliott explores the work of visual artist and author Rubén H Bermúdez, specifically his photobook Y tú, ¿por qué eres negro? (And You, Why Are You Black?) and documentary, A todos nos gusta el plátano, which record self-representation of the Black diaspora in Spain — a country where whiteness is positioned as the norm.  This is an extract from Wasafiri 126: Impossible Returns — The Spain Issue.

Read an extract from the forthcoming novel Bait by Eugenia Ladra, translated from Spanish by Miriam Tobin. In the small fictional village of Paso Chico, based on the author's own childhood experiences in northwest Uruguay, two protagonists – a thirteen-year-old named Marga and a man named Recio – form a complex relationship that both reveals and unsettles how forms of violence are normalised within small towns across the country, indeed across many other Latin American nations  —'every day without fuss, inconvenience, or even complaint.' This extract is accompanied by a special author introduction.

'I’m not saying, hey, imagine, what if it was you. / I’m saying it is you' — this poem by Sarah Lasoye collapses the distances between us, where complicity and silence breed and hinder true connection and solidarity. The poem was shortlisted for the 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize.

We spoke to Gavin Herbertson, winner of the 2025 Wasafiri Essay Prize, about his winning essay 'Interleafing the Philoctetes Figure: Derek Walcott’s Omeros and The Isle is Full of Noises', making scholarship more accessible outside the academy, Caribbean literary history, his love of Walcott, the best writing advice he's received, and more.

In this vulnerable piece of life writing teeming with a distinct sense of voice, Mistale Taylor writes about her epilepsy and how each episode leaves her finding her way back to herself. Woven through past instances of her seizures are musings on the language, art, treatment, and wording around being an epileptic woman — 'for the past fourteen years, part of me has been trying to assign something meaningful to the condition.'  This piece was shortlisted for the 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize.

Our Writer in Residence Cara Thompson reflects on her position as a 'nature poet' in her journey to becoming Nottingham's inaugural Nature Poet Laureate. Pushing back against the bucolic, idealised, and privileged forms of nature writing she encountered in her schooling in the UK, she reclaims and redefines the genre on more inclusive terms. 

Norman Erikson Pasaribu translates four poems by Ni Made Purnama Sari, whom they call 'one of the most important Balinese writers working today'. These poems were published in Purnama's 2015 collection, Kawitan, which explores how Balinese people relate to both their ancestral pasts and their futures in a home subject to intense environmental exploitation and touristic, (neo)colonial exoticisation. 'To translate these poems is to understand Purnama’s experiences,' Pasaribu says, 'and then respond to the giant that is Western ignorance of lives in the Global South.' All four poems are presented here in both the original Indonesian and in English.

Read an extract from Meena Kandasamy's new novel, Fieldwork as a Sex Object, where protagonist Amy/Amrita's world begins to reel when a deepfake porno of hers goes viral. As the online world nastily careens into the offline, she reckons with a culture of violent algorithms, digital warfare, rising Hindu supremacy, quick cancellations, and barbed patriarchal structures.

In this essay, Deepa Bhasthi defends untranslatability – the intentional choice to not-translate text – as a necessary practice. As examples, she draws on Kannada words that feel too complex or hyperlocal to be translated into a single English word, as well as significant books she read during her time as our inaugural International Translator in Residence. Written by Jamil Jan Kochai, Waguih Ghali, and SJ Kim, these texts deliberately do not translate/transliterate certain words into English, and Bhasthi unpacks the aesthetic and political impacts of these choices.

Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse is a prolific Rwandan writer critically acclaimed in the French-speaking world; her work significantly contributes to the literature on witnessing genocide in Rwanda and beyond. Here, she speaks with Zoë Norridge – Wasafiri Associate Editor and academic at King's College London – about her early reading influences in Rwanda and France, the role of writing today at a time of heightened conflict, and how she supports survivors of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi to share and publish their stories. This conversation includes additional material from Beata and Zoë's original interview published in print in Wasafiri 125.

Read an extract from My Own Dear People, the forthcoming novel by Jamaican writer Dwight Thompson, accompanied by a special introduction from the author. The story follows a young man named Nyjah Messado upon his return to Montego Bay — a city that is a vitrine for foreign tourists, yet pockmarked with danger for its local residents. Nyjah is haunted by the memory of witnessing an immense act of cruelty at the elite boys' school he once attended. In MoBay, he meets a young woman named Andrene and is forced to reckon with his own masculinity and actions in a society frequently hostile to women and queer communities. 

Read three new poems by Tishani Doshi from her forthcoming collection, Egrets, While War. The first, 'Monsieur Tout-Le-Monde', is dedicated to Gisèle Pelicot, a French woman who became a major feminist figure after waiving her right to anonymity as a victim in a multiple rape case; the poem is meditative, pausing for the 'kerfuffle' of a bird, yet piercing in its portrayal of the commonality of sexual violence. The remaining two poems are sonnets, similarly contemplating the movements of birds and other animals, while studded with reflections on the nature of living itself.