
Wasafiri Wonders: An Yu
Writing is one of the most unpredictable crafts. 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.

Wasafiri Wonders: Sharanya Deepak
I veer towards writing about memory as a way to navigate something very present or painful in my adult life. 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.

Transformative Testimonies: Online Events on Writing and Human Rights
We're excited to announce a new series of free digital events, Transformative Testimonies: Writing and Human Rights, taking place 17 - 23 May, 2021. All events are free to attend. In December 2020, Wasafiri launched issue 104: Human Rights Cultures.

#blacksays by Joshua Idehen
Black is tired. … Black would like … to make a statement: … Black i s tired … … Black’s eyes … vacant, arms … leaden, tongue … can’t taste shit … stomach cannot compress death. … … Black would like … to state :

Writing Britain Now: Sean Wai Keung
The history of migration in the UK is also a history of food. And the history of British food is also a history of its cities.

'When you think I’m hurrying you but you’re taking an eternity over every damn thing' by Minifreda Grovetzski
‘ I need you, Simi, please call . ’ … … I message back. ‘ Working til two. Then I’ m all yours . ’ … … But a t two, I’m h ungry . … … ‘ I need you. ’ … … I ignore it . … … ‘ G ot to be at the doctors before three.

How do we breathe in a country that does not accept us?
Writer and curator Kadija Sesay writes about co-curating Khadija Saye: in this space we breathe for The British Library, reflecting on spirituality and storytelling in British-Gambian culture, art as resistance, and bonds between mothers and daughters.

The Good Brown Girl by Shivanee Ramlochan
Do you want to submit to the 2021 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize for Fiction, Life Writing, and Poetry, but you're not sure what 'life writing' looks like? Let Shivanee Ramlochan show you. I began writing poems not because I was inspired, but because I was compelled.
Articles

It Has Taken Many Years to See My Body by Tishani Doshi
i. Muladhara … If we could reconstruct the temple of our bodies, we all know what we’d change first. A little demolition work in the zone of belly, some gutting around hips and bum, a coat of paint after weather-stripping the face.
Poetry

‘Creating – or awakening to – Octavia’: Rachel Long
I set up Octavia in 2015. But I did not do it alone.
Articles

Call of Duty by James Bradley
Dr. James Bradley – an Environmental Scientist at Queen Mary, University of London – reflects on the climate crisis and responds to Robbie Arnott's 'Warmer Waters'—published as part of the Queen Mary Wasafiri Global Dispatche s initiative…
ArticlesGlobal Dispatches

'We need to normalise rage': In Conversation with Asim Abbasi
Armed with a BSc (Hons) in Economics from the London School of Economics, and a MA in Global Cinemas from the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), Asim Abbasi is a British-Pakistani film director, screenwriter, and producer.
Articles

Welcoming our new Editors at Large
Wasafiri is excited to announce that we have expanded our global team of editors by recruiting five Editors at Large based in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Aotearoa New Zealand.

Warmer Waters by Robbie Arnott
At least it’s good for the planet, we say to each other. At least there’s a silver lining. With fewer planes in the air, fewer cars on the roads, fewer cruise ships smouldering over the ocean, there has to be a positive effect on the environment. It makes so much intuitive sense:
ArticlesGlobal Dispatches

Houhai by Jennifer Wong
If you ask me about water, this is the water I think about. The glow of myriad colours on the lake at night. Rickshaw drivers practising their English consonants and vowels with tourists as they pedal past the hutongs, earning five yuan each time—not even a pound.
Poetry

Cutting Water by Emily Pritchard
My father chose the flattest stones, … skimming them out to sea, … and taught me never … to walk on a beach … without filling my pockets … with pebbles. When was it … that he learnt to skim? And who taught him? … I know small things … about that boy.

The Fight in Us by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara
Our winter 2020 issue – Wasafiri 104: Human Rights Cultures – makes space for South-South connections and conversations, focusing on four post-conflict countries – Kenya, Rwanda, Colombia, Argentina – bringing together the literatures that follow in the wake of war.
Articles

Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga
There is no better lycée than Our Lady of the Nile. Nor is there any higher. Twenty-five hundred metres, the white teachers proudly proclaim. ‘Two thousand four hundred ninety-three metres,’ points out Sister Lydwine, our geography teacher.
Fiction

Choreographing Covid-19 Stories by Thomas Glave
The Covid-19 pandemic has had an effect on us all, and we all have stories to share of our experiences within it. These are stories that only we can tell, in our own words.
Articles

bone journey by Rupam Baoni
t here’s an art to arranging … bones, laying them together … by way of size, shape, density, … to form a human body; … y ou need to be careful where the … sternum crosses the chest or … the rib cage cloisters sit…
Poetry

The 2021 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize: Open for Submissions
Representing more of the globe than any other prize of its kind, the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize is opening its doors for 2021 and welcoming work in fiction, poetry, and life writing from unpublished writers around the world. The prize will remain open from 1 February to 31 May 2021 .
Articles

Egress by Nauman Khalid
Urfi , I never came to stay. It’s just that it’s no longer as simple as it was . Then , the plan was straightforward: I was a visitor, just pass ing through , embracing this land of dreams for a year.
Articles

'Poetry as a tool of their own choosing': In Conversation with the Young People’s Laureates
L-R: Theresa Lola, Momtaza Mehri, Cecilia Knapp, Caleb Femi … Now in its fifth year, the Young People’s Laureate (YPL) for London is UK poetry’s third most prominent ‘office’, after the Poet Laureate and the Oxford Professor of Poetry.
Articles

Holding On by Adam Zmith
2020 … We’ve lived in separate boxes in Hackney all this time. … I pull off the mask that conceals my nose and my mouth. I’m among the trees now, looking for you. Are you on the towpath? I check my phone. No messages.
Fiction