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.
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Wasafiri Wonders: Cecilia Knapp
Ever wondered what your favourite author’s first drafts look like?
Interviews
2021 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize Shortlist Announced
Fifteen writers across three genres have been shortlisted for the prestigious and uniquely international Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize, this year judged by Hirsh Sawhney (Fiction), Christie Watson (Life Writing), and Tishani Doshi (Poetry), and chaired by Andrew Cowan .
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Tending by Eileen Chong
… A weed:
Poetry
An Extract from 'What Have I Done?' and Other Illusions of Control by Jessica Gaitán Johannesson
Jessica Gaitán Johannesson is our new Writer-in-Residence for 2021-22. Read an excerpt from her essay in Wasafiri 107: Crisis/Recovery. I have one or two pictures from the winter of 2006. They’re caged in an external hard-drive, carried around between homes; safe, but out of the way.
Writer in Residence
Exclusive Extract: In Conversation with Arundhati Roy
In this interview with Pavan Kumar Malreddy, Roy looks back on her decades-long career, and reflects on art and protest, the role of the novel, and notions of 'normality' in a post-pandemic world.
Interviews
Crown Shyness by King Llanza
* … Click here to download a screenreader accessible version of this poem. King Llanza (he/they) is from the Philippines.
Poetry
Slow Motion by Ellie Slee
It was my fourth birthday and we were moving into the house that would become our home of twenty years. The heat was arid, and the road — the same road where I’d learn to ride a bike, run races with my sister, walk back from exams down, break up with my boyfriend at the kerb of — was glittering.
The Restaurant by Byron Beynon
Lingering on this tropical esplanade … I watch at low tide … the restaurant of mud … that softly feeds the waterbirds. … The second day of a Queensland winter … in a humid, rich June … as the carriage of the pelican … rests…
BLUE by alice hiller
* … Click here to download a screenreader friendly version of this poem. alice hiller’s Forward Prize shortlisted debut, bird of winter , responds to being groomed and sexually abused in childhood, and finding healing beyond this crime.
Poetry
A Carry-On Full of Pictures and Letters by Heba Hayek
Heba Hayek is a London-based writer born and raised in Gaza, Palestine. Sambac Beneath Unlikely Skies, her first book, is a collection of remembrances of a girlhood spent growing up in Gaza. Hayek pairs each vignette with a song from a playlist — an artistic choice that echoes the care with which Hayek writes about her memories, which are multi-layered and dreamlike, tender and brutal. In this extract from the book, faded photographs and old wounds drift to the surface of memory as the writer asks what it really means to leave a place behind.
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Wasafiri at Large: Reinventing the Book in Malaysia
Earlier this year, Wasafiri was joined by five new Editors at Large based in Southeast Asia and Aotearoa New Zealand. In the coming months, as part of our new Wasafiri at Large series, each Editor at Large will shed light on their local literary scene. William Tham Wai Liang, based in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, was formerly Senior Editor at Vancouver’s Ricepaper magazine.
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To be Birthed in Water by Hana Pera Aoake
In this piece, coinciding with Wasafiri's Water issue, Hana Pera Aoake writes vividly about the many interconnected bodies of water that make up their ancestry, their body, and their future.
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The Bend in the Arc by C.A. Davids
In the next essay in our Queen Mary Wasafiri Global Dispatches series, novelist CA Davids – writing from Cape Town – tracks the slow, surreal rhythm of days spent indoors watching the world outside unravel. As small violences play out in the news, ‘justice, and the application of justice, does not feel fixed, but shifting.’ A year on, as South Africa enters another fourteen-day lockdown and the same injustices repeat themselves on-screen, Davids brings the hazy patterns of pandemic time, and of injustice, into sharp focus.
Claiming Space as a Writer in a Multilingual World
Writer and poet Jennifer Wong took up the position of Wasafiri's Writer-in-Residence in November 2020. Six months on, as her residency comes to an end, she looks back on her popular programme of writing workshops that took place earlier this year…
Writer in Residence
Wasafiri Wonders: Elizabeth-Jane Burnett
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.
Interviews
Hinemoana by Stacey Teague
in the far-spread ocean solitudes … … Hinemoana hides herself so perfectly … in the fold of the tide … … she thinks she would prefer to stay untethered … so moves from place to place … … Hinemoana is a blue hallway … with no adornments … … she is a backlit expanse …
Meditations: Tice Cin on Caleb Azumah Nelson's Open Water
Wasafiri’s ‘Meditations’ is a new series that features creative and personal responses to new literature, asking writers to seek connections with themselves, their own work, and the text they’re reading.
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Reading in Antarctica
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…
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American Blue by Michael Malay
For many days it did not snow; the skies were clear and the valley was still. Then it snowed for weeks, a gentle but persistent snow that buried the earth. At first, the snow settled lightly on the land, making the fields shine out in a white brilliance.
The Benevolence of a Raincoat by Veronique Bequin
‘A raincoat?’ Ettie Pebble’s puffy fingers fumbled with the buttons of the coat. She was talking to herself as she looked at the large white plastic discs looped through their button holes. She was perplexed. Simple actions had become hard. How did that happen? The raincoat was bright yellow.
Red by Lola Olufemi
They were calling it disaster communism. At the meetings they encouraged people to orientate themselves toward ‘the common good’, recognising disaster as an ongoing state of emergency, as the very fabric of the old way. Aude struggled to make sense of the coming days, let alone months and years.
Friends from Home by Aparna Surendra
Dimuth’s father had lost his job. He was an accountant, CIMA-qualified, still a few years from retirement; the family had outstanding medical bills and loan repayments on the land in Ragama. Dimuth didn’t know what to do. … Dimuth told Meena this in the middle of the quad .
Dear Sabrina – by Rebecca Baird
After Sabrina Benaim … My house is falling down. It is falling down, but … slowly.