Announcing the 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize Shortlists

We are pleased to share the shortlists for the 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize, judged by Anton Hur (Fiction), Noreen Masud (Life Writing), and Yasmine Seale (Poetry), and chaired by Romesh Gunesekera. 

Celebrating the most exciting new voices in life writing, poetry, and fiction from around the world, our international prize has no limits on age, gender, nationality, or background. For the first time in its 16-year history, the Prize was open to writing in translation across all categories. 

All winners and shortlisted writers will be offered the Chapter and Verse or Free Reads mentoring scheme in partnership with The Literary Consultancy (dependent on eligibility), as well as a one-year print subscription to Wasafiri.

Of the 2025 shortlists, Chair Romesh Gunesekera said: ‘We live in difficult times. To write poetry, fiction, or life writing with craft and relevance is a challenge. Our shortlists show how engagingly and successfully it can be done. We found writing that was unpredictable, thrilling, experimental, unusual, political, and personal. In our shortlists you will find boundaries shifted, history confronted, realities tested, and language itself opened up and explored. I am also glad to report that two translated entries made it onto the shortlists. The door is open. Thank you Wasafiri for giving me the chance to discover so many new and exciting voices and engage in such a stimulating discussion with my fellow judges — a discussion that made a difference to the way we see and understand the world.’ 

Wasafiri’s Editor and Publishing Director Sana Goyal said: ‘We’re delighted to present the shortlists for the 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize, which was open to entries in translation for the first time. This year’s shortlisted writers show staggering potential — and we're excited for readers around the world to engage with their stories, essays, and poems.  Inventiveness, playfulness, and a penchant for defying stereotypes are at the heart of these works, which we very much hope you'll join us in championing and celebrating.'

Meet the 2025 shortlist:

Fiction, judged by Anton Hur 

'This year’s fiction shortlist is about being transported to different places, different time periods, and different interiorities, not in a shallow and escapist fashion but in a manner that is both borne of ambitious vision and profound emotion, combined with an experimental spirit befitting the title of the best of new writing.'

Jo Bardsley for ‘Iko of Benin, King’s Diver’
Kamelia Panayotova, trans. from Bulgarian by Dilyana Kodjamanova, for ‘Anne’
Jaden Morton for ‘On Naming Storms and People’
Emma Oldham for ‘Dugout’
Rajiv Ramkhalawan for ‘Blood and Bone’ 

Life Writing, judged by Noreen Masud 

'The life writing on this shortlist refuses cliché. From mould to menoflans, chair tombs to cold fava beans, these pieces find new ways to think and talk about the most urgent questions of our lives today.'

Raluca David for ‘Growing Mould During the Rise of Fascism’ 
Malak N. Hijazi for ‘I Exist in Disappearance’
Luke Liu for ‘Chair Tombs on the Hill’
Dani Salvadori for ‘Songs of a Menoflan’
Mistale Taylor for ‘No Less Wonderful: Woman in Pursuit of Freedom' 

Poetry, judged by Yasmine Seale 

'The shortlisted poems are personal and political, “original” and translation, song and sigh. They allow meaning to emerge mysteriously, with the devices specific to poetry — sound and pattern and arrangement in visual space.'

Reem Abbas for ‘You, at the Check-in Counter’
Flora Beagley for ‘Sutton Hoo’
Sarah Lasoye for ‘So, I’m Told’
Naomi Madlock for ‘Mudlarking for the Occasionally Housebound’
ariel rosé, self-translated from Polish, for ‘Prospero’s Song’ 

The winners of each category will be announced at the prizegiving ceremony on Thursday, 30 October, at the Southbank Centre as part of London Literature Festival. The event is open to all and tickets are available here.  

The shortlisted pieces will be published online in the coming months, with the winning pieces published in the spring 2026 issue of Wasafiri.  

The 2026 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize will open in February. 

For further information, or to interview our shortlisted writers, contact Elizabeth Robertson at elizabeth.robertson@qmul.ac.uk.