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Octavia Poetry Collective for Womxn of Colour was founded in 2015 by Rachel Long in response to the lack of inclusion in UK poetry and the academy. It has gone on to foster some of the most talented poets in Britain. Based at the Southbank Centre in London, the collective has read at venues from Tate Modern to Latitude Festival, led workshops at The Poetry School and The Serpentine Galleries, and been featured in The Guardian and on the BBC’s World Service.

Dr James Bradley – an Environmental Scientist at Queen Mary, University of London – reflects on the climate crisis and responds to Robbie Arnott's 'Warmer Waters', published as part of the Queen Mary Wasafiri Global Dispatches initiative, an essay series of exchanges and conversations between creative writers and academics.

Armed with a BSc (Hons) in Economics from the London School of Economics, and a MA in Global Cinemas from the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), Asim Abbasi is a British-Pakistani film director, screenwriter, and producer.

Wasafiri is excited to announce that we have expanded our global team of editors by recruiting five Editors at Large based in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Aotearoa New Zealand.

In this piece for Global Dispatches, writer Robbie Arnott looks at the continued problem of emissions even during COVID-19 lockdowns.

Watch Jennifer Wong read her poem 'Houhai' on our YouTube channel.

My father chose the flattest stones,   … skimming them out to sea,   … and taught me never   … to walk on a beach   … without filling my pockets   … with pebbles. When was  it   … that he learnt to skim? And who taught him?   … I know small things   … about that boy.

Our winter 2020 issue – Wasafiri 104: Human Rights Cultures – makes space for South-South connections and conversations, focusing on four post-conflict countries – Kenya, Rwanda, Colombia, Argentina – bringing together the literatures that follow in the wake of war.

There is no better lycée than Our Lady of the Nile. Nor is there any higher. Twenty-five hundred metres, the white teachers proudly proclaim. ‘Two thousand four hundred ninety-three metres,’ points out Sister Lydwine, our geography teacher.

The Covid-19 pandemic has had an effect on us all, and we all have stories to share of our experiences within it. These are stories that only we can tell, in our own words.

t here’s  an art to arranging    … bones, laying them together     … by way of size, shape, density,   … to form a human  body;   … y ou need to be careful where the    … sternum crosses the chest or   … the rib cage cloisters sit…

Representing more of the globe than any other prize of its kind, the Queen Mary  Wasafiri  New Writing Prize is opening its doors for 2021 and welcoming work in fiction, poetry, and life writing from unpublished writers around the world.  The prize will remain open from 1 February to 31 May 2021 .

Urfi , I never came to stay. It’s just that it’s no longer as  simple as it was .   Then ,  the plan was straightforward: I was a visitor, just pass ing  through , embracing this land  of dreams  for a year.

L-R: Theresa Lola, Momtaza Mehri, Cecilia Knapp, Caleb Femi … Now in its fifth year, the Young People’s Laureate (YPL) for London is UK poetry’s third most prominent ‘office’, after the Poet Laureate and the Oxford Professor of Poetry.

2020   … We’ve lived in separate boxes in Hackney all this time.   … I pull off the mask that conceals my nose and my mouth. I’m among the trees now, looking for you. Are you on the towpath? I check my phone. No messages.

Wasafiri  is excited to announce a series of online writing workshops tutored by our Writer-in-Residence Jennifer Wong, and  our  Associate Editor Thomas  Glave .  … Jennifer Wong's series of writing workshops will focus on poetry, human geography and writing across and between languages…

Applications for the 2021 Editor at Large programme are now closed. You can get to know more about our Editors at Large here.

Penny Green – Professor of Law and Globalisation, Head of the School of Law, Queen Mary, University of London – reflects on borders, racism and Myanmar's genocide and responds to Margarita García Robayo's 'From This Place on the Border', published as part of the Queen Mary Wasafiri Global Dispatches initiative, an essay series of exchanges and conversations between creative writers and academics. 

Codex 10  … Rumi said Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely … is made for the eye of one who sees.  In 1973, the same year … my mother met my father, Steven Speilberg had just wrapped  … on American Graffiti.

In this piece – translated by Carolina Orloff – Margarita García Robayo explores conversations around colourism within a family context. This piece is part of our Global Dispatches series.

We spoke to Billy Kahora and Zoë Norridge about curating, compiling, and commissioning Wasafiri 104, our special issue on Human Rights Cultures. You can read their print editorial, ‘What Is Seen and What Is Said’, and other free texts from the issue here.

Ever wondered which book your favourite translator would secretly love to translate? Or a book in translation that may have slipped under your radar? Wasafiri Wonders is a series that asks these questions for you.

What a year. As November shifts into December, and the eyes of the world turn backward – reviewing the last eleven months, and turn forward – looking ahead to what many of us hope will be something better, it's almost impossible not to fall into what are becoming 2020's analytical clichés:

Kiera Vaclavik – Professor of Children's Literature and Childhood Culture at Queen Mary, University of London – reflects on child-centred research during and post-pandemic and responds to Avni Doshi's 'Unfamiliar Creatures', published as part of the Queen Mary Wasafiri Global Dispatches initiative, an essay series of exchanges and conversations between creative writers and academics.