News & Events

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. 

Wasafiri will be returning to the Southbank Centre to celebrate our 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize winners in fiction, life writing, and poetry, as part of this year's London Literature Festival.

Wasafiri and Tagore's Salon are delighted to be co-hosting an event with writers Dur e Aziz Amna and Farah Ali (also Reviews Editor at Wasafiri), titled Writing Through Pain: On Labour and Literature.

We're delighted to be partnering with Birmingham Literature Festival for an event with writers Dalia Al-Dujaili and SJ Kim on the subject of belonging to a land and to a nation.

Wasafiri, Centre for Contemporary Writing (Queen Mary University of London), and Fitzcarraldo Editions present an afternoon of poetry with Sophie Chauhan, Sasha Debevec-McKenney, and lisa minerva luxx.

Join us for a conversation with Khaled Esguerra, Juan Gonzales, and Carlos Páez González – contributors to Wasafiri 122: The UAE Issue – with accompanying song and theatre performances, at Project Space, Alserkal Avenue in Dubai.

Join us at the launch of Wasafiri 122: The UAE Issue in its home country on Sunday, 14 September, at Bayt AlMamzar in Dubai — for an afternoon of conversation, readings, film, and a community meal.

We're pleased to announce the first live event – part of the second Bhashavaad: National Translation Conference – with our inaugural International Translator in Residence, Deepa Bhasthi: 'No Story is Small'.

Wasafiri will be hosting a special event on the subject of craft at Edinburgh International Book Festival with Nina Mingya Powles and Stephanie Sy-Quia.

Wasafiri invites creative submissions in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in response to navigating interlinked global systems of oppressions and seeking to forge transnational solidarities across various boundaries. We invite you to interpret what the term ‘solidarity’ evokes for you — and what it means to be with and for each other in these times. 

We are thrilled to announce the 2025 International Booker Prize winner Deepa Bhasthi as Wasafiri's inaugural International Translator in Residence as part of a brand-new three-year partnership with The SALT Project. 

In celebration of the launch of Wasafiri 122: The UAE Issue, join us for a roundtable discussion with three NYU Abu Dhabi alumni and issue contributors: poet and writer Aathma Nirmala Dious, researcher Noora Jabir, and writer and Wasafiri Deputy Editor Vamika Sinha. 

Wasafiri is delighted to celebrate the publication of our 2025 summer special issue, The UAE Issue, on 15 July, 2025 at Reference Point in London.

Join us for a conversation with R T Samuel and Ruby Hembrom — two indie publishers who are championing some of the most radical work in India's literary scene.

Join Wasafiri for BLACK FUGITIVITIES, a two-part community event series taking place this summer 2025. 

Delivered in partnership with The Polis Project and Dialogue Books, join Wasafiri for a special evening with authors Devika Rege and Pankaj Mishra to mark the London launch of Rege’s acclaimed debut novel, Quarterlife. 

Wasafiri is seeking papers, position pieces, and practice-led contributions for the 2025 English: Shared Futures conference from 3-5 July in York, UK.

Join Wasafiri for a poetry reading and panel discussion on dislocation and diaspora with Theophilus Kwek (Commonwealth) and Suji Kwock Kim (Notes from the Divided Country).

We are thrilled to announce Ashley Barr as the winner of the 2024 Wasafiri Essay Prize for their work, ‘"Avert the Icy Feeling": Bhanu Kapil & Performing the Life of a Poet in White Spaces', while – in a first for the prize – Simar Bhasin has been awarded Highly Commended for her essay, 'A Qissa of Resistance: Desire & Dissent in Selma Dabbagh’s Short Fiction'.

Join author Gurnaik Johal, in conversation with Wasafiri’s Editor and Publishing Director Sana Goyal, to discuss the short story form in relation to questions of literary value, readership, and prize culture. 

The sixteenth edition of the prize brings an exciting new development as we open to entries in translation – across all three categories – for the first time since the prize was founded by Dr. Susheila Nasta in 2009. We are pleased to share that the 2025 edition of the prize is now open for entries until 11.59pm BST on 30 June, 2025.

Wasafiri is excited to announce translation workshops tutored by our 2024/2025 Translator-in-Residence Sawad Hussain.

Wasafiri magazine, in collaboration with Angelique Golding – a PhD student on the magazine's archives, based at Queen Mary University of London – has curated an exhibition chronicling its forty-year publishing history. The exhibition crafts paper chains from Wasafiri’s archives, showcasing the magazine’s evolution over four decades, and its deep connections with Queen Mary University of London, academia, and libraries. 

We’re thrilled to announce the winners of the 2024 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize in Poetry, Fiction, and Life Writing.