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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…

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.

Read Avni Doshi's piece for Global Dispatches, on Covid-19 and childcare.

We're delighted to announce the appointment of our new Writer-in-Residence, the poet, writer, and translator Jennifer Wong.

Read an extract from an essay originally published in the catalogue for Scenes from the South (Makhanda: Amazwi South African Museum of Literature, 2020), an international travelling exhibition curated by Kai Easton (SOAS University of London) and David Attwell (York) in collaboration with Amazwi and the Harry Ransom Center (HRC), University of Texas at Austin.

This year, we’ve joined hands with Queen Mary, University of London Arts & Culture to work together on the ‘Global Dispatches’ initiative: an essay series of exchanges and conversations between creative writers and academics. 

‘It was so interesting, considering everything that’s happening in the world, to be in that privileged position of seeing where people’s minds are at, what people are writing,’ said poet Raymond Antrobus of judging the 2020 Queen Mary  Wasafiri  New Writing Prize.

I am shaped by borders. I was born with the privilege to cross these borders freely; I was born with light skin and a New Zealand passport. I am shaped by colonial islands. Aotearoa New Zealand on my dad’s side, and Sabah, Malaysia, on my mum’s side – formerly known as British North Borneo.

Born in Jamaica in 1963, Claudia Rankine moved to the United States as a child. A poet, playwright, essayist, her work spans several decades, including Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric (2004), Citizen: An American Lyric (2014) and the play The White Card (2019).

My mother’s behaviour at Arab weddings would make the perfect audition video for RuPaul’s Drag Race, and the next one we attended together only confirmed her as the clear genetic foundation for my drag career. It was a cousin’s wedding, and this time it was happening in Mykonos in Greece.

Kadija Sesay (Chair), Simon Prosser (Fiction) (Photo credit: Sharron Wallace for Museum of Colour), Aida Edemariam (Life Writing), and Raymond Antrobus (Poetry) (Photo credit:

In an exclusive for Wasafiri, Sandeep Parmar and Anamik Saha discuss two reports that shook the publishing landscape in the UK, the state of publishing and reviewing, and what the future holds.

Cathy Park Hong is a Korean-American poet and essayist who is the author of three volumes of experimental poetry. Her most recent work is the non-fiction book, Minor Feelings:

Branko A single year brings two big changes: I become a man and my brother becomes an American. My new status is announced by Mrs Mitchell from over the road when she hears that my voice is breaking.

Ever wondered what your favourite writer’s first drafts look like? Or which book your favourite translator would secretly love to translate? Wasafiri Wonders is a series that asks these questions for you.

One of the many myths perpetuated by British colonial governments and its systems of propaganda is that Empire existed not for the economic benefit of Britain but to civilise, Educate (and Christianise) primitive peoples of the earth.

a crowd gathers around an empty frame … suspended from the ceiling / some see the … face of their saviour / others find … themselves lost in a tunnel / those at the … front with their chequebooks at the ready … have the audacity to call it Art / they’re all … correct / but they’re also wrong to…