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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.  … Describe your first drafts in one sentence. … The same unreadable scribbles, but with one overarching rule:

Since the late 1980s, the poet George Szirtes has published many collections of poems including the monumental New and Collected Poems (2008). His latest publication is The Photographer at Sixteen (2019), a memoir of his mother’s life recounted in reverse and based on many photographs.

Last week, Jo Lloyd won the 2019 BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University for her short story, ‘The Invisible’, which is available to listen to on the BBC Sounds app, or here.

Last month, Birmingham played host to its first decolonial literature festival: ‘Literature Must Fall’. A day-long event held in the city centre, the festival brought together writers, editors and academics to explore what it could mean to decolonise and demystify literature today.

The shortlist of the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize 2019 has been announced, with five shortlisted writers each in the categories of Fiction, Life Writing, and Poetry. The winners will be announced on 9 November 2019 at the British Library as part of our 35th birthday celebrations:

Deirdre Shanahan's debut novel Caravan of The Lost and Left Behind (Bluemoose Books) tells several untold stories of individuals who live in but at the fringes of mainstream British society — those on the roads…

The essay by Amrita Sharma and Peerzada Raouf, and extracted from issue 99 of Wasafiri, is second in a series of ethnographic writings documenting events and practices that make the Kashmiri people’s resistance today.

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.

Libita Clayton, ‘BS2-RESIST & REVOLT BLACK HISTORY, LIVE TRANSMISSION’. Image courtesy of artist.

Ashley Hickson-Lovence's debut novel, The 392, is set almost entirely on a London bus over just 36 minutes, and was released in April 2019 (OWN IT!).

Ever wondered what your favourite writer’s first drafts look like? Or which book they love that nobody’s heard of?

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. Diana Evans is the author of Ordinary People, The Wonder, and 26a.

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.

On the occasion of the publication of Roger Robinson’s A Portable Paradise on 12 July, our writer-in-residence, Nick Makoha sat down to speak with the author about the book, his working methods and his views on poetry.  … Robinson first published in Wasafiri Special Issue 74 : 'Brighter Suns:

The mind is a warped thing. When I still lived in Uganda, before any prize came my way, before I was published and I wrote in darkness, I looked at the phenomenon of literary prizes in a somewhat peculiar way.

Ever wondered what your favourite writer’s first drafts look like? Or which book they love that nobody’s heard of?

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi landed on the literary landscape with her ‘great Ugandan novel’, Kintu, which won the Kwani?

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.  … Describe your first drafts in one sentence.   … A start.

Norman Erikson Pasaribu is a poet and writer. His first poetry collection, Sergius Mencari Bacchus, was published in 2016 in his native Indonesia. Norman was approached by writer and translator Tiffany Tsao, and the pair then spent three years working together on Sergius Seeks Bacchus (2019), an English translation of the Indonesian collection which went on to win a PEN Translates Award. Norman and Tiffany are working together on translating Tiffany’s English-language novel, Under Your Wings, into Indonesian, and have developed a close, collaborative working friendship. They corresponded by email with Wasafiri’s Emily Mercer.

Ever wondered what your favourite writer’s first drafts look like? Or which book they love that nobody’s heard of?

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.  … Describe your first drafts in one sentence. … Electric.

This article is published alongside the publication of Wasafiri Special Issue 98: Queer Worlds/Global Queer.

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? Describe your first drafts in one sentence. … Messy, curious, intuitive, and filled with footnotes.