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In this candid, comprehensive essay drawing on her own career experiences, our outgoing 2024 Translator-in-Residence Sawad Hussain discusses the particularities – both the perks and drawbacks – of translating between Arabic and English, and the larger inequities between language pairs in the translation industry.

'This is the problem with anecdotes: they are so ambiguously weighted. They might say nothing or they might say everything' — Life Writing judge for the 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize, Noreen Masud, talks about the value of the anecdote when writing about one's life.

Read an extract from Heuijung Hur's forthcoming short story collection Failed Summer Vacation, translated from Korean by Paige Aniyah Morris. 'Imperfect Pitch' centres an enigmatic mystery at the heart of a band's fan club. 

Ark Ramsay's Life Writing piece – shortlisted for the 2024 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize –  immerses itself in a knotty quest to 'outpace gender'.

Mo Ogrodnik's debut novel Gulf traces the lives of five women from very different origins colliding in the Arabian Gulf. This extract follows Zeinah, a Syrian woman in the first days of her marriage to a jihadist. Alone and constantly reevaluating, Zeinah must consider her position in this new world. 

Jack Joslin – shortlisted for the 2024 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize in Fiction – mixes white lies with white ghosts in a sharply-paced schoolboy story.

In this exclusive extract from Wasafiri 121, writer and geologist Elizabeth Wong's ecofiction explores privilege and passing, climate degradation, and the tenuous status of not 'refugees' or 'migrants', but the 'landless' — all against the backdrop of an elite hotel in Monte Carlo.

Zainab Imran – shortlisted for the 2024 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize in Poetry – examines the UK's rejection of Shamima Begum as a citizen, its repercussions reverberating through the narrator's life.

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.