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Braiding in readings of Don Mee Choi and Kim Hyesoon, this creative essay by SJ Kim reflects on translatability, Korean history, storytelling, patriarchy and femininity, and empire, through the performance piece Burnt Offering, performed by the 99ArtCompany in London last year.

Novelist Irenosen Okojie writes a tribute to her former mentor and ‘literary titan’ Alex Wheatle, who passed away recently on 16 March, 2025. Known as the ‘Brixton Bard’, Wheatle was the author of several books set in South London, and was awarded an MBE for services to literature in 2008.

In this surrealist short story set in Yemen's capital city, playfully satirising an oppressive society – written by Abdoo Taj and translated by Andrew Leber – men, quite literally, lose their heads. This story is part of The Book of Sana'a, the first major collection of Yemeni fiction in translation.

This life writing piece by Alex Mormoris – shortlisted for the 2024 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize – reflects on Jamaican diasporic experience and Windrush history, punctuated by the music of Tom Jones.

In this exclusive interview, Romesh Gunesekera, Chair of the Judges of the 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize, discusses the evolving relevance of literary prizes, the importance of perseverance, and offers advice to prize entrants and aspiring writers.

In this exclusive extract from Wasafiri 121, Professor Sunny Singh speaks about her experiences in navigating three adjacent spaces in the literary industry: creative writing, pedagogy, and publishing.

Wasafiri is proud to publish the 2024 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize shortlisted pieces. In this evocative piece of fiction, Lerah Mae Barcenilla weaves Filipino folklore – specifically a mythical shapeshifting creature or aswang – with a young girl's coming of age.

In this Meditations piece, our current CHASE intern Sophia Arnold reflects on her relationship with rivers and water bodies, and the wider environmental humanities, from Cambridge, UK. Woven in is her reading of the 2024 anthology By the River: Essays from the Water’s Edge (Daunt Books), inciting important conversations on how we can better care for our climate.

Based between the UK and New Zealand, SK Grout offers two poems which unearth everyday lyricism and memories amid wider concerns of environmental and climate care. 

Wasafiri is proud to publish the pieces shortlisted for the 2024 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize. In this dense, run-on poem, Sara Elkamel looks at every aspect of her life and gaze as touched by her mother's.

Read an extract from The Palace on the Higher Hill, the first English-language translation from award-winning Palestinian author Karim Kattan. Translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman, this novel introduces readers to a magical and somewhat sinister Palestine through a haunted family, whose narrative mirrors the history of their people and nation.

In this photo essay, Nazik Armenakyan discusses the rise of female photographers in Armenia, her own career path and positionality, the ethics of shooting vulnerable subjects, and the freedom to follow her intuition. Translated by Ani Jilavyan and commissioned in tandem with Wasafiri 120: Armenia(n)s – Elevation.

In this exclusive extract from Wasafiri 121, author Sohini Basak interviews Korean-American poet and translator Don Mee Choi. Speaking ahead of the UK/EU release of her book, Mirror Nation, Choi discusses the use of visuals in her poetry, the influence of her father's war photography, and overlaps between writing and translating.

Read an extract from Brazilian-Montenegrin writer Monika Radojevic's debut short story collection, A Beautiful Lack of Consequence. In this darkly comic, dystopian short story – titled 'Menace' – a world too close to our own deals with appearances and disappearances of epic proportions.

Last year, Angelique Golding – a PhD student working on the Wasafiri archives – shared an essay examining the illustrious forty-year history of Wasafiri. For her second installment, she revisits the archive to focus on the changing nature of archival materials and what we might gain – or lose – in transitioning from physical to digital.

Wasafiri is proud to publish the 2024 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize shortlisted pieces. In this piece of life writing, Abu Leila mixes forms to dazzling effect, incorporating interviews, prose, and verse to chart a personal and familial history of Palestinian resistance. 

Wasafiri works with Editors at Large across South East Asia and Aotearoa New Zealand, and the Middle East. During their tenure, each Editor at Large writes a piece reflecting on an aspect of their literary locality. In this piece, Şermin Sezer-Toraman reflects on how contemporary Turkish women writers, through works blending magical realism, ecocriticism, and the spectre of the recent pandemic, address the interconnectedness of nature and women's oppression.

Wasafiri is proud to publish the 2024 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize shortlisted pieces. These poems, essays, and short stories detail a range of emotions and experiences, produced by promising new writers from all over the globe. In this fiction piece, Kate Griffin explores working class identity through an absurdist sprint from birth to adulthood. 

In this Meditations piece, Anahit Ghazaryan contemplates what motivates people to learn Armenian — and how language itself is lost, reshaped, hidden, questioned. Translated from the Eastern Armenian by Ani Jilavyan, this piece has been commissioned to celebrate Wasafiri 120: Armenia(n)s – Elevation.

Wasafiri remembers Bapsi Sidhwa, one of the most important writers of South Asian historical and feminist fiction, in this tribute by Dr Maryam Mirza. Born in Pakistan, Sidhwa wrote the novels Ice-Candy Man and The Crow Eaters, among others, covering themes of colonialism, violence against women, and Partition.

This collaborative ode to the tradition of the Armenian memory book, or houshamadyan – from Wasafiri 120: Armenia(n)s – Elevation – comprises a unique survey of the genre by historian Khatchig Mouradian, an essay and maps by urbanist Garine Boghossian, poetry by Christopher Kazar Janigian, and art by Masha Keryan.

We are thrilled to publish an exclusive extract from Deviants, Santanu Bhattacharya's second novel. This bold, electrifying story follows a family in which three generations of gay men in India fight for love and dignity against the currents of their times.

Read an exclusive extract from The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji, a darkly funny, life-affirming debut novel following five women from a once illustrious Iranian family as they grapple with revolutions both personal and political.

Read an excerpt from Wasafiri 120: Armenia(n)s – Elevation, translated from the Eastern Armenian by Hayk Hambartsum, and edited by Deanna Cachoian-Schanz. In this short story, Anna Davtyan explores the power dynamics between a female photographer and a young, male subject and, through this, studies the way we see ourselves – and others – in the world.