Meet the 2024 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize Winners
We’re thrilled to announce the winners of the 2024 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize in Poetry, Fiction, and Life Writing.
Open to new writers across the world who have yet to publish a full-length book, the competition awards winners with prizes of £1,000 and print publication, in addition to mentoring opportunities offered to all shortlisted writers in partnership with The Good Literary Agency and The Literary Consultancy.
‘Every year since 2009, the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize has opened the door to fresh talent that has enriched the literary scene incomparably — and 2024 continues in that proud tradition. The judging process rewarded us with some remarkable reading: excitingly innovative approaches to form that challenge the boundaries of category and writing that evokes a captivating range of emotions. The showcasing of new ideas, new experiences, and new sensitivities was something we all applauded and were delighted to discover in the winning entries’, said Prize Chair Margaret Busby.
Wasafiri’s Editor and Publishing Director Sana Goyal said: ‘We’re truly delighted to reveal the winners of the fifteenth Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize. Warm congratulations to the winners and all the shortlisted writers on this major accomplishment. The Prize – and magazine – platforms tomorrow’s writers today and we are honored to play a small role at the beginning of these writers’ journeys. We are so excited to share the best new voices in fiction, life writing, and poetry with the world — and wish them every success for a very bright future ahead.’
Introducing the Winners
Fiction: Thảo Tô for ‘Love in the Time of Migration’
‘The smell of oil and spices from that woman’s kebab follows Dương as she stumbles downhill. She focuses on angling herself to ease the tension in her toes as they dig into the tips of her chunky boots. Her head feels like cotton and she begins to sense that she isn’t walking straight. She hasn’t had dinner yet, having spent so much time perfecting her nails and letting them dry, and the mixture of alcohol and soda, along with the shock of a stranger’s bright red talon flicking at her, have made her sweaty with disgust ...’
Isabel Waidner, the 2024 Fiction judge, praised the piece for the way in which it ‘writes disappointment, dejection, and even abjection, with an energy that turns them into something else: that is, pure life.’
Thảo Tô is a writer from Vietnam. Her short stories and book reviews have appeared in Sine Theta Magazine, diaCRITICS, and elsewhere. She’s currently based in London.
Life Writing: Joey Garcia for ‘A Public Space’
‘If you're Black, you knew the answer after reading the first sentence of this true story. If a Black man was casting a fishing line down the middle of a street, someone would have called the cops. The Black man would have been cited or arrested. Neighbors would have whispered about how he had no business practicing fly fishing in the middle of a street that is a main artery into the neighborhood. That it was dangerous. That he is dangerous ...’
Cristina Rivera Garza, the 2024 judge for the Life Writing category, described how ‘both evocative detail and questions posed directly implicate readers, placing them at the site of the conflict and compelling them to openly view the gender and racial components of the situation. What would your answer be?’
Joey Garcia is a Belize-born writer. During her 16 years as a U.S. high school teacher, she also trained Belizean teachers and managed education programs for Belizean children. Joey’s writing has been published in, or received awards from, Mslexia, Hypertext, Hippocampus Creative Nonfiction magazine, Writer’s Digest, and The Caribbean Writer.
Poetry: Nasim Luczaj for ‘the village’
‘in that morbid curiosity i am the village.
in the village with forest fringes botched
by quads i am the village. in the village
where hares always run straight ahead
thinking they’re outrunning the car
or not thinking at all, who am i to know,’
Poetry judge Meena Kandasamy said that ‘the choice of the winner was near-unanimous, we all loved the poem the village. It is a short poem, but in those lines, it achieves something all poetry aspires to — which is to shift your axis of looking at the world just that little bit.’
Nasim Luczaj is a poet and English–Polish translator based in London. She is the author of HIND MOUTH (Earthbound Poetry Series). Her work has appeared in PROTOTYPE 5, Propel, Gutter, DATABLEED, Tentacular, Wet Grain, and SPAM Zine, among others. She grew up in Subcarpathia.
The shortlisted pieces will be published on the Wasafiri website over the coming months, and the winning pieces will be published in the Spring 2025 issue of Wasafiri magazine. Subscribe now to be the first to read them.
For press enquiries, or to interview our winning writers, contact Elizabeth Robertson at [email protected]
Photo by Florian Cordier on Unsplash