Wasafiri 122: The UAE Issue — Launch Party

Join us in celebrating the launch of our summer special issue, Wasafiri 122: The UAE Issue  on 15 July, 2025 at Reference Point in London.

This unique, multiplicitous project explores the United Arab Emirates’ literary and creative scene — away from monolithic representations of the region. The issue offers a curated selection of art, writing, and research, where its diverse contributors interrogate the UAE as a place of meaning, survival, pleasure, history, flânerie, and much more, while celebrating its many forms of plurality.

Chaired by the issue’s guest co-editors Laure Assaf and Deepak Unnikrishnan, this will be an evening of live music (by Sarathy Korwar, Al MacSween, and Tamar Osborn) and readings from issue contributors including Nadeen Dakkak, Aathma Nirmala Dious, Sara Elkamel, Augustine Paredes, and Vamika Sinha, alongside presented photographs by Manuel Benchetrit and Khaled Esguerra.

Copies of Wasafiri 122: The UAE Issue, alongside a selection of issues from our archive, will be on sale at the event. You can also purchase a print copy via our website here.

When: Tuesday, 15 July, 2025, 7.30-11pm (doors open 7pm)
Where: Reference Point, 2 Arundel St, Temple, London, WC2R 3DA
Tickets: Full price £12, with a Pay what you can option.
Access: Wheelchair accessible

This event is supported by the NYU Abu Dhabi Arts and Humanities Research Kitchen Al-Mashhad.

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Laure Assaf is an anthropologist and an Assistant Professor at NYU Abu Dhabi. Her research and teaching focus on youth, urbanity, migration, and social hierarchies in the contemporary United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the broader Gulf region.

Manuel Benchetrit is a photographer whose work interrogates urban practices and visual narratives. Through a long-standing collaboration with geographer Roman Stadnicki, he has extensively explored and examined the dynamics of cities across the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula.

Nadeen Dakkak is Lecturer in World and Postcolonial Literatures in the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Exeter. Her research examines literary representations of migration in the Gulf and her monograph, Migration to the Gulf in the Arabic Novel, is forthcoming with Edinburgh University Press.

Aathma Nirmala Dious is a Malayali writer from Abu Dhabi. Much of her work – fiction, poetry and nonfiction – deals with South Asian-Gulf migration narratives and personal history, with a focus on womanhood, family, and memory. Her debut novel Thoo! is forthcoming with Hachette India and she is currently completing her MA in Literary Studies at Leiden University. Previously she graduated from NYU Abu Dhabi with a BA in Literature and Creative Writing in 2021 and was a recipient of the Salama Bin Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship in 2023.

Sara Elkamel holds an MA in Arts Journalism from Columbia University and an MFA in Poetry from New York University. A Pushcart Prize winner, she is the author of the poetry chapbook Field of No Justice (African Poetry Book Fund and Akashic Books, 2021).

Khaled Esguerra is a photographer, artist, and designer from Abu Dhabi. His artistic practice tackles the complexities and nuances of migrant identity, urban narratives, and claiming space in the Gulf, situated by his experience growing up and living in Abu Dhabi. He primarily works with photography and other image-based methods on research-driven, long-term projects.

Sarathy Korwar is a drummer, composer, producer, and bandleader. Korwar has established himself as one of the most original and compelling voices in the UK jazz scene. His music fuses jazz, electronics, Indian folk and classical influences with a focus on decoloniality, community, race, and transcendence. His latest album, KALAK, is an Indo-futurist manifesto that celebrates a rich South Asian culture of music and literature and urges a cure for historical amnesia. Korwar has been the recipient of an AIM Award, MOJO Jazz Album of the Year, and The Guardian Best Global Album of 2022.

Al MacSween is a performer, composer, and music producer who has had an extensive music career, developing a unique voice that spans multiple genres, including jazz, electronic music, contemporary classical, Indian classical music, Afro-Cuban music, and various forms of folk music. They’ve collaborated extensively with artists including The Cinematic Orchestra, Nubya Garcia, Gary Bartz, Sarathy Korwar, Maya Youssef, Aruna Sairam, and Ruby Turner OBE, is founder of award-winning group Kefaya, described by The Guardian as “one of the most intriguing new bands of the year”.

Tamar Osborn is a UK-based saxophonist/woodwind-player and composer renowned for her innovative approach and versatility across genres, bringing a wealth of experience from a career informed by observation, participation, and variety. She collaborates regularly in various ensembles with Dele Sosimi, Sarathy Korwar, Rosa Brunello, Jessica Lauren, Emanative, Pouya Ehsaei, and more, and is a founder member of improvisation-based groups Flock, Unknown to Known, Tryp Tych Tryo, and London Odense Ensemble

Augustine Paredes (b. 1994, Cagayan de Oro City, Philippines) is a multi-disciplinary artist questioning what it means to desire in the light of migration, identity, and longing. His expanded photographic practice revolves and evolves in questioning the post-colonial identity of a Filipino in diaspora through different appropriation of artistic mediums, traditional materials, and historical narratives. Augustine works with image-making via photography, painting, poetry, and installation.

Vamika Sinha is an Indian-born, Botswana-raised arts and culture writer based in London. She holds an MA in Comparative Literature from SOAS University of London and is interested in entwinements of postcoloniality, cosmopolitanism, feminism, and migration. Vamika is one of the founding editors of Postscript Magazine. Publishing arts criticism in various publications, she is also a Senior Editor at the South Asian Avant-Garde Anthology and Deputy Editor at Wasafiri.

Deepak Unnikrishnan is a writer from Abu Dhabi. His award-winning Temporary People, a work of fiction about Gulf narratives steeped in Malayalee and South Asian lingo, set the base for his latest project, ‘Pettee’, a dance piece co-written and co-directed with the writer Karthika Naïr, composer Sarathy Korwar, and other movement-makers. He is an Associate Arts Professor at NYU Abu Dhabi, and he has two more books in him, no more.