Litany of the Shoreline by Naush Sabah
over head billowing … headscarf white as surf … like a hug … billowing like a curtain … or a flag hanging like … a noose a mask like … a blanket a sheet … billowing … …
Poetry
Solitude and Covid-19 by Barbara Taylor
In the latest of Wasafiri’s Global Dispatches series, author and academic Barbara Taylor responds to Katherine Agyemaa Agard’s work ‘strangers, dreaming’.
Global Dispatches
Craft Episode 1 Transcript: Nina Mingya Powles
Welcome to Craft. Each month we bring you one international writer talking about one of their works for about thirty minutes. This month, Nina Mingya Powles talks about her food diary and travel memoir, Tiny Moons. Nina is a poet, writer, and maker from New Zealand currently based in London.
Podcast
Over the last year, Wasafiri’s Publishing Director, Malachi McIntosh (with support by members of the Wasafiri team) has been hard at work designing and recording Craft – a literary podcast featuring a range of international writers, including Daniel Mella, Chen Chen, Bernardine Evaristo…
strangers, dreaming by Katherine Agyemaa Agard
In the latest instalment of the Queen Mary and Wasafiri essay series, Global Dispatches, novelist Katherine Agyemaa Agard writes on dreams, solitude, and touch – both physical and imagined.
Global DispatchesLife Writing
Wasafiri Wonders: Dzifa Benson and Romalyn Ante
The Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowships for 2021-2022 were announced on 2 November, with poets Dzifa Benson, Romalyn Ante, and Jamie Hale each receiving £15,000, and a year of mentoring support dedicated to developing their craft.
InterviewsWasafiri Wonders
On Evil (Crime in the Academy)
In this powerful, experimental personal essay, Elizabeth Chakrabarty writes about her decision to leave academia in order write fiction, and how the traditional narrative arc of a crime novel created space for her recovery.
Life Writing
'Writers grow out of communities': Malachi McIntosh on Wasafiri's Craft
Over the last year, Wasafiri's Publishing Director, Malachi McIntosh (with support by members of the Wasafiri team) has been hard at work designing and recording Craft – a literary podcast featuring a range of international writers, including Daniel Mella, Chen Chen, Bernardine Evaristo…
Interviews
Fisher of Men by Caleb Femi
In honour of Caleb Femi's Poor winning the 2021 Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection, Wasafiri is proud to share his poem 'Fisher of Men', which was shortlisted for the 2017 Wasafiri New Writing Prize.
Poetry
Five for the Forward Prize: In Conversation with the Nominees for Best First Collection
L-R: Caleb Femi, alice hiller, Holly Pester, Ralf Webb and Cynthia Miller … Part of the prestigious Forward Prizes for Poetry, the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection rewards ingenuity, skill, and boldness.
InterviewsPoetry
Winners Announced for the 2021 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize
We are excited to announce and warmly congratulate the winners of our 2021 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize for Fiction, Life Writing, and Poetry. ‘I was very mindful of doing this work for Wasafiri,' said novelist and judge Hirsh Sawhney, of judging the prize.
Articles
'At sentence level, I am ruthless': In Conversation with Louise Kennedy
Ahead of her event on 15 October at Cheltenham Festival, 'The Sunday Times Must Reads: Louise Kennedy', Wasafiri talked to author Louise Kennedy, whose collection of short stories, The End of the World is a Cul de Sac (Bloomsbury) was released earlier this year to rave reviews.
Interviews
Abdulrazak Gurnah Wins the Nobel Prize for Literature
We are so proud to join in the congratulations for Abdulrazak Gurnah, Wasafiri Advisory Board member, longstanding contributor, editor and friend, who has won the 2021 Nobel Prize for literature.
Articles
An Extract from 정 by S J Kim
S J Kim was born in Korea and raised in the American South, and is a Lecturer in Creative and Critical Writing at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Life WritingExtract
Wasafiri Wonders: Cecilia Knapp
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.
InterviewsWasafiri Wonders
2021 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize Shortlist Announced
Fifteen writers across three genres have been shortlisted for the prestigious and uniquely international Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize, this year judged by Hirsh Sawhney (Fiction), Christie Watson (Life Writing), and Tishani Doshi (Poetry), and chaired by Andrew Cowan .
Articles
Tending by Eileen Chong
… A weed:
Poetry
An Extract from 'What Have I Done?' and Other Illusions of Control
Jessica Gaitán Johannesson is a Swedish/Colombian writer and climate justice activist based in Edinburgh. Recently appointed Wasafiri's new Writer-in-Residence for 2021-22, she facilitates workshops exploring the colonial roots of the climate crisis.
Writer in Residence
Exclusive Extract: In Conversation with Arundhati Roy
In this interview with Pavan Kumar Malreddy, Roy looks back on her decades-long career, and reflects on art and protest, the role of the novel, and notions of 'normality' in a post-pandemic world.
Interviews
Crown Shyness by King Llanza
* … Click here to download a screenreader accessible version of this poem. King Llanza (he/they) is from the Philippines. His poems have appeared in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Sledgehammer Lit, bind collective, amberflora, Voice & Verse, SAND and Cordite Poetry Review, among others.
Poetry
Slow Motion by Ellie Slee
It was my fourth birthday and we were moving into the house that would become our home of twenty years. The heat was arid, and the road — the same road where I’d learn to ride a bike, run races with my sister, walk back from exams down, break up with my boyfriend at the kerb of — was glittering.
The Restaurant by Byron Beynon
Lingering on this tropical esplanade … I watch at low tide … the restaurant of mud … that softly feeds the waterbirds. … The second day of a Queensland winter … in a humid, rich June … as the carriage of the pelican … rests…
BLUE by alice hiller
* … Click here to download a screenreader friendly version of this poem. alice hiller’s Forward Prize shortlisted debut, bird of winter , responds to being groomed and sexually abused in childhood, and finding healing beyond this crime.
Poetry
A Carry-On Full of Pictures and Letters
Heba Hayek is a London-based writer born and raised in Gaza, Palestine.
Life WritingExtract