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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…

She won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2017, then the BBC National Short Story Award in 2018. Now, Ingrid Persaud brings her most expansive, ambitious work yet. Love After Love has already generated international headlines.

That night I snuck out of the house and walked for half an hour to Ramlet AlBayda. It was the only public sandy shore left in Beirut, courtesy of the warlords who ran the country after the end of the civil war.

Read an exclusive extract from Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd, which explores the lives of working class women in contemporary Japan.

Room (n.) … A space that can be occupied or where something can be done. … The first conversation took place in the university Council Chamber seven years ago. A Professor of Literature, the author of many books, was being honoured, although I wasn’t sure exactly why.

Ever wondered what your favourite writer’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.

Here, take my brain, each last lobe … one hundred billion empty neurons … firing, its shocks so blunt, my thoughts disrobed; … bruises and wounds unhidden.

In July 2018, I completed my Master’s degree frustrated that I never located enough material to sustain further study on British-Iranian literature. I found myself reaching over the Atlantic — to North America, where American-Iranian voices were vibrantly circulating in comparison to the UK.

Bernice Chauly is a Malaysian novelist, poet, educator, and former director of the George Town Literary Festival. She has published seven books of poetry and prose:

We spoke to Elizabeth Chappell, Hiromitsu Koiso and Yasuhiko Ogawa – our three guest editors – about curating, compiling and commissioning Wasafiri 102, our special issue on Japan. Wasafiri :

Mieko Kawakami, born in Osaka in 1976, made her literary debut in 2006. She has published nearly thirty volumes of novels, short stories, poems, and essays.

Ever wondered which book your favourite translator would secretly love to translate?

On 7 June 2020, the city of Bristol burst into the international spotlight in a single moment of visual poetry, as protestors armed with ropes and determination did in a matter of minutes what the city had long failed to manage:

It is hard to review a book of such gravitas and importance; a text that refuses the boundaries we were meant to exist within. How to honour the soft liquid rigour, the sharp vast tenderness, of a writer like Saidiya Hartman?

‘BLM organisers call off London event [13th June] to avoid clashes with far right’, the Guardian headline reads on the very evening I’m writing this…