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In this exclusive extract, Yoko Tawada – translated by Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda – considers the place of categorisation in literature. Her own writing is housed variously under ’Japanese Literature‘, ’Women's Literature‘, and ’Literature of Colour‘, among others. Here, Tawada breaks down these artificial boundaries to see the words beneath.  

Khaled Esguerra, Juan Gonzales, and Carlos Páez González came to the UAE at different ages. They hail from different backgrounds and engage in various forms of visual and performance arts. In Part 2 of their interview published in Wasafiri 122: The UAE Issue – on how their practice generates conversations, and weaves collectives and audiences across different segments of UAE society – they elaborate further on these ideas while discussing what community building even means.

The first piece in our new Writing the Self, Writing Berlin series – led by our CHASE intern Divya Ghelani – is a personal essay by Divya, reflecting on her entwined experiences of producing both a novel and a baby via IVF while living in Berlin. She explores how this time transformed her ideas of anxiety, perseverance, and the act of creation.

This melancholic short story by Fatima AlJarman – commissioned in tandem with Wasafiri 122: The UAE Issue – traces a daughter and father redefining their relationship in the aftermath of a loss. With an image by UAE-based photographer Adele Bea Cipste.

In the sterile surroundings of a VFS visa application centre in Dubai, an unnamed narrator reflects on her failed marriage, familial and societal expectations, and what freedom means to her. Written by Bhoomika Ghaghada and extracted from Wasafiri 122: The UAE Issue.

Dalia Al-Dujaili writes about the inspiration and research behind her debut, Babylon, Albion, a nature-memoir exploring identity through the land-based mythologies of Britain and Iraq and family memories of migration.

It is impossible to explore the UAE’s literary scene without probing its publishing landscape. Three bookmakers in conversation, Ahmad Makia, Zoe Patterson, and Vamika Sinha, are located at seemingly different ends of this spectrum. In Part 2 of their interview published in Wasafiri 122: The UAE Issue – on engaging place, a text’s lifetime, and the necessity, or lack thereof, of an archive – they expand on these ideas while examining the wider UAE publishing landscape, its history, and their roles within it.

In this wide-ranging interview – on the humour of maps, immigration officers, pilfering through a father's library, and more – Safa Khatib speaks to poet and translator Mona Kareem about their collection I Will Not Unfold These Maps and the evolution of their poetics and practice amid Arabic and American publishing industries. This piece is published in tandem with Wasafiri 122: The UAE Issue, where Mona is a contributor.

This exclusive extract from Ana Paula Maia's forthcoming novel, On Earth As It Is Beneath – translated by Padma Viswanathan – enters the world of an unusual penal colony in the wilderness with only male inmates.

Read an extract from Saima Begum's forthcoming debut, The First Jasmines. The novel centres two sisters, Lucky and Jamila, who – around the dawn of Bangladesh as a nation – are captured by Pakistani soldiers and forced to waste their days in a makeshift prison. 

Extracted from the lead feature in Wasafiri 122: The UAE Issue, this personal essay by Nadeen Dakkak charts her familiy's movements across the Gulf and beyond, reflecting on the ambiguity, silences, longing, nostalgia, and practicalities of serially migrating.

In this life writing piece shortlisted for the 2024 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize, Sarah Anjum Bari explores matrilineal relationships, patriarchal expectations, obedience, and rebellion for South Asian girls — and how hair can be at the root of it all.

Awarded Highly Commended in the 2024 Wasafiri Essay Prize for her paper on Selma Dabbagh's short fiction, Simar Bhasin speaks to us about her scholarship, championing Palestinian literature, love and desire as anticolonial forces, and more.

In April 2025, Wasafiri Editor and Publishing Director Sana Goyal spoke with author Gurnaik Johal at an event at Queen Mary, University of London, about the place of short stories within publishing, literary prize culture, the defiance of untranslated language, and more.  

Simon Peter Eggertsen was shortlisted for the 2024 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize in Poetry for a poem imagining the experiences of a nineteenth-century slave.

Sasha Debevec-McKenney shares two new poems – 'I'M NOT WRITING BECAUSE I'M FINALLY IN LOVE' and 'Apartment' – that flicker across mundanities, introspections, and desires.

Kate Hawkes – shortlisted for the 2024 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize in Fiction – explores the grief and 'river' of memory within a relationship transformed by illness.

We spoke to anthropologist Laure Assaf and writer Deepak Unnikrishnan about editing Wasafiri 122: The UAE Issue, which aims to move away from monolithic representations of the region. They discuss their personal histories with the country, surveillance, family, transience, gaze, theorising the UAE in real-time, and more.

In the first extract from Wasafiri 122: The UAE Issue, Mohamed Shafeeq Karinkurayil remembers watching the Berlin Wall fall on his television in Abu Dhabi's Madinat Zayed township — a place he spent several years of his childhood in, following his father's immigration from Kerala.

In this poem, Juleus Ghunta – shortlisted for the 2024 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize in Poetry – juxtaposes the ordinary lives of his peers with his sister's suicidal ideation. The 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize is open until 30 June 2025. Read the full guidelines and submit your work.

Winner of the 2024 Wasafiri Essay Prize, Ashley Barr talks about discovering the subject of their winning essay, British-Indian poet Bhanu Kapil, private space, books they're reading right now, and whether academic writing should be niche or for the masses.  The 2025 Essay Prize is open for entries until 30 June.

Wasafiri Associate Editor Thomas Glave pens a letter in tribute and grief for Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938-2025).

Both a novelist and translator, Anton Hur – Fiction judge for the 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize – discusses the varied experiences between writing and translating fiction, and how each role is treated in a book's production process.

In tribute to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1938-2025), Wasafiri has lifted the paywall on a range of articles, stories, and interviews from our 41-year-old archive. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has been a long-standing supporter of Wasafiri, serving on its Advisory Board. Florian Stadtler, Deputy Chair and Trustee of Wasafiri, introduces the following works by the eminent Kenyan scholar and writer, now free to access for all.