Wasafiri 117: The State of the Industry
We start our 40th anniversary year with Wasafiri 117, which has a special focus on ‘The State of the Industry’. Our spring 2024 issue reflects on the contemporary international literary industry through a variety of perspectives, from publishing to academia, via the work of writing, translating, editing, publishing, and teaching.
Featuring an exceptional line-up of interviews, with Alexander Chee and Isabel Waidner, Margo Jefferson, and Elaine Castillo, as well as a lead feature from Jen Calleja and new poetry from Meena Kandasamy, Andrés N Ordorica, and Yilin Wang this issue is essential reading for anyone existing within today’s literary spheres. In this issue, you’ll also get a chance to meet the eagerly awaited winners of our 2023 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize and Essay Prize.
Contents
Editorial
The Sound of Freedom
Sana Goyal
Lead Feature
Custard Pies
Jen Calleja
Articles
Uprooted in the 'Postcolonial' Moment: Attia Hosain's No New Lands, No New Seas
Mobeen Hussain
Spectral Trans Figures: The Ambiguous and Atemporal Hijra Body in Narcopolis
Karthik Shankar
Writing In/Against the Academy: Contemporary Biomythographies by Women of Colour
Georgia Lin
Life Writing
Absent Presence
Nasia Sarwar-Skuse
Dambore Dambore: Bidding Goodbye to Mauritian Bhojpuri
Vedita Cowaloosur
Life in the UK
S J Kim
Interviews
Creativity and Capitalism: Alexander Chee and Isabel Waidner in Conversation
Alexander Chee and Isabel Waidner
The Critic at Work and Play: In Conversation with Margo Jefferson
Franklin Nelson
High Stakes: Elaine Castillo on Being Better Readers
Katie Goh
Art
Letter from Kingston
Annie Paul
Fiction
That Which We Call a Rose
Sharika Nair
Sis
Caitlin Stobie
Poetry
Vows; Salt
Amara Amaryah
Diversity-Inclusion-Equity
Meena Kandasamy
Memory Map
Andrés N Ordorica
Mother, Earth — A Colloquy
Swati Rana
A Glossary for Moving Overseas
Yilin Wang
Review Essay
On The Luxury of Writing with Honesty
A Horse at Night: On Writing – Amina Cain
Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art – Lauren Elkin
Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma – Claire Dederer
Reviews
Out of Sri Lanka: Tamil, Sinhala & English Poetry from Sri Lanka & Its Diasporas – Vidyan Ravinthiran, Seni Seneviratne, and Shash Trevett, eds
Adrija Ghosh
River in an Ocean: Essays on Translation – Nuzhat Abbas, ed
Letters to a Writer of Color – Deepa Anappara and Taymour Soomro, eds
Chandrica Barua
Disorientation – Elaine Hsieh Chou
The Unfortunates – J K Chukwu
Vika Mujumdar
Kibogo – Scholastique Mukasonga trans by Mark Polizzotti
No Edges – Multiple authors and translators
Mayada Ibrahim
White Literary Taste Production in Contemporary Book Culture – Alexandra Dane
Reading Bestsellers: Recommendation Culture and the Multimodal Reader – Danielle Fuller and DeNel Rehberg Sedo
Torsa Ghosal
Mister N – Najwa Barakat trans. by Luke Leafgren
Traces of Enayat – Iman Mersal. Translated by Robin Moger
Lara El Mekaui
The Centre – Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi
Meet Us by the Roaring Sea – Akil Kumarasamy
Dur e Aziz Amn
