Wasafiri Wonders: Safia Elhillo

Our 2026 International Writer in Residence Safia Elhillo speaks to us about her reading lists, writing rituals and practices, what 'global solidarities' means to her, valuable advice she has received as a writer, and more in this new interview.

Sudanese by way of Washington DC, Safia is the author of Girls That Never Die, The January Children, Home Is Not a Country, and Bright Red Fruit, and co-editor of the anthology Halal If You Hear Me. During her Wasafiri residency, she will be engaging with notions of global solidarities in contemporary writing and literature.

Describe your first drafts in one sentence.

A mess!!! 

Tell us about your writing rituals. 

The closest thing I have to a writing ritual these days is that for the past few years I’ve done a 30/30 (writing 30 poems over 30 days) with a friend. Those 30 drafts end up being basically all the poetry I’ll write all year, and I’ll revisit them later with an eye toward revision and polish, etc. But I love this practice, not even for its generative quality but because of the particular kind of quality time it allows me to spend with a friend’s work and their thinking (and usually their news, because the facts of their life in that moment often end up trickling into the work).  

Your residency reflects on the theme of global solidarities. What does this term mean to you?

I love the invitation contained within solidarity work to resist homogenising our struggles while simultaneously understanding that they are connected.   

What is a classic you recently read for the first time?

Not the first time, but the first time since I was in grade school — I recently reread Toni Morrison’s Beloved for a book club with two friends where we’re rereading all of Toni Morrison’s books in chronological order. So far this year we’ve done Beloved and Sula (which I’ve revisited more often in the years since I first read it).  

What is a book or pamphlet you love that more people should know about? 

Fatimah Asghar’s forthcoming collection Daughter of the Mountains, which I’ve been able to spend time with over the past couple of years as it's taken shape, and which I’m so excited to see in the world! 

Which books or authors are relevant reads in our political climate — is there one you’d recommend to current world leaders? 

I keep returning to Isabella Hammad’s Recognising the Stranger, Camonghne Felix’s Let the Poets Govern, and Mohammed El-Kurd's Perfect Victims.  

What skills or practices do you take from your teaching work and apply to your poetry writing, or vice versa? 

In both practices, I believe in leaving room for the unexplained, the thing beyond discernible craft that makes the poem feel like it has magic in it. While I love pulling apart a poem to examine how it’s made, what keeps me in love with poems is that little bit that remains beyond my understanding that feels like the presence of the divine.  

What is the best advice you’ve received on writing? 

Because my work tends toward obsession, when I was studying with Louise Glück, she would urge me to let my poems 'look out the window' sometimes, and that’s made so much room in my poems to form connective tissue between different interests and parts of my life — instead of always just being zoomed in on the one thing I think I’m supposed to be looking at. 

Cover image: Illustrated by Simone Khanyi Hadebe