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Journalist, critic, and founder of the Bocas Lit Fest, Marina Salandy-Brown has contributed immensely to Caribbean literature and culture, as well as playing a key role in introducing and promoting that literary culture across the world. This year, we're excited to have her chairing the prestigious 2022 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize, working with a brilliant panel of judges including Mary Jean Chan, Preti Taneja, and Francesca Wade. Our Prize intern, Ioana Radulescu, spoke to Salandy-Brown to find out more about why literary prizes still have relevance in today's world, plus helpful tips on what she's looking for in this year's prize entries.  You can enter the 2022 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize – open until 30 June 2022, 5pm BST – and read more about the Prize here. 

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.

Written by Sang Young Park and translated into English by Anton Hur, Love in the Big City (Tilted Axis Press) was longlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize and has been widely praised for its sharp translation and its tender, humorous examination of Korean queer life. In a society that still oppresses and ignores its queer citizens, and where it is becoming increasingly difficult for people to survive, Young’s story has a particular poignancy. It is a celebration of those who exist on the periphery, and an exploration of the relationships – platonic, familial, and romantic – that change one’s life irrevocably. In this interview with Victoria Caudle, author Sang Young Park and Anton Hur discuss the parts of themselves and their experiences that they brought to their work, the difficulties of being young and queer in Korea, and the limited opportunities for translators to make a sustainable living.  

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.

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 exclusive extract from Wasafiri 109, Adrija Dey interviews Sara Ahmed, discussing Ahmed's experience of writing her book Complaint!, and the larger process of gathering testimonies, being a 'feminist ear', and working to advocate for others and oneself from an intersectional perspective. You can read the full excerpt in Wasafiri 109, now available to download or purchase online.

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. With activists of colour often overlooked in mainstream media, Okojie links her longing for home with an admiration and fierce pride at the innovation of African artists and entrepreneurs working for a better future. Read more Global Dispatches – including Swati Arora on protest, Robbie Arnott on climate, and Margarita García Robayo on Covid-19 and racism – here.

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 these two poems from Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe's Dylan Thomas Prize-shortlisted collection Auguries of a Minor God, the poet explores her own writing process, and the complex construction of her verse. Together, these extracts and accompanying commentary provide both a unique understanding of the rich meaning that these poems carry, and an insight into her poetic craft. 

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 celebration of Ramadan, read Sanah Ahsan's evocative and rhythmic poem 'ramadan's greeting'.

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 conversation between Wasafiri Writer-in-Residence Jessica Gaitán Johannesson and novelist Daisy Hildyard, both writers reflect on their upcoming books The Nerves and Their Endings and Emergency, and on the way that the climate emergency has affected and shaped their work.

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 emerging 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 emerging writers from all over the globe.

In the latest of Wasafiri's Global Dispatches series, Dr Swati Arora reflects on CA Davids's essay, answering with a piece that examines India's growing Hindu supremacy, the communal language of protest, and how the state's rhetoric around the Covid-19 pandemic can shore up systems of oppression. 

Wekker reminds us that the struggle for decolonisation is never a short-term, technocratic, or superficial exercise; rather, it goes deeper, as a reckoning with the different ways in which four hundred years of colonialism continue to shape the present. 

To celebrate the launch of Wasafiri 109, read an extract from Monica Ali's  Love Marriage (2021, Virago Books), a warm and tender novel that examines the ways in which class, race, and culture intersect in contemporary Britain.

Ever wondered what your favourite author’s first drafts look like? Or which book they love that nobody’s heard of? Wasafiri Wonders is a series that asks these questions for you. We spoke with Lola Olufemi, a black feminist writer and CREAM/Stuart Hall Foundation researcher from London.

Sabba Khan – author of graphic memoir, The Roles We Play – talks to Wasafiri's Sana Goyal about the good and bad days, moving between scales, and flipping things on their head, and her ‘continuous battle to not fall into the representation game’.

Andrés N Ordorica delivers an electric reading of 'In the Name of the Joto, Mariposa, y Maricón' — a joyful prayer and blessing to queer Latinx identity, freedom, and culture.

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.