People

Aamer Hussein was born in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1955, and moved to London in 1970. He reviews regularly for The Independent, and is Professorial Writing Fellow at the University of Southampton.

Aanchal Malhotra is a writer and oral historian from New Delhi. She is the co-founder of the Museum of Material Memory, and the author of two critically acclaimed books, Remnants of Partition and In the Language of Remembering, that explore the human history and generational impact of the 1947 Partition.

Abdulrazak Gurnah has contributed to the development of Wasafiri from the beginning, working as a contributing editor since 1987. Born in Zanzibar, he left in the late 1960s and migrated to Britain.

Abeera Khan is Lecturer in Gender and Sexuality at the Centre for Gender Studies, SOAS, University of London. Her knowledge production and pedagogy are concerned with the interrelatedness between empire, gender, race, and sexuality.

Akila Richards is an award winning poet, writer and spoken word artist, performing and collaborating in the UK and internationally. Her work features in collaboration with artists and genres for theatre, film, visual arts and digital platforms.

Alastair Niven OBE is Principal of Cumberland Lodge, Windsor and was President of English PEN from 2003 to 2007. He was former director of literature at the Arts Council of Great Britain (latterly the Arts Council of England) and the British Council.

Alex Tickell  is Senior Lecturer in English at the Open University, UK, and is the Director of the OU’s Postcolonial and Global Literatures Research Group. He specialises in the Anglophone literary histories of South Asia and Southeast Asia and conjunctions of literature and politics.

Alison Donnell is Professor of Modern Literatures in English and Head of School of Literature, Creative Writing and Drama at the University of East Anglia.

Alvin Pang, PhD, is a poet, writer, editor and translator whose broad creative practice spans three decades of literary and related activities in Singapore and elsewhere. Featured in the Oxford Companion to Modern Poetry in English and the Penguin Book of the Prose Poem, his writing has been translated into more than twenty languages, including Swedish, Croatian, Macedonian, Chinese, Malay and French.

Amit Chaudhuri was born in Calcutta and has published several prize winning novels as well as works of literary criticism.His work frequently appears in well known journals across the globe. His most recent publications include a collection of essays, Clearing A Space:

Andrea is a writer of many things; articles, op-eds, speeches, corporate brochures, and short author bios in third person. The person she identifies with most is Sisyphus, but instead of rolling an immense stone boulder up a hill, her eternity project is writing the novel that keeps slipping away from under her fingers. (She’ll get it one day.) Andrea lives, works and writes in the Middle East.

Angelique Golding is a LAHP Collaborative Doctoral student working with Wasafiri on our 40th Anniversary projects with a focus on the Wasafiri archive, which forms the basis of her research.

Anna Knox is a writer and essayist from Aotearoa New Zealand. She has lived and worked in the US, Middle East and Scandinavia and currently lives in Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington with her family. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia.

Annie Paul (1956, Kerala, India) is editor-in-chief of the online magazine of Caribbean writing, PREE (preelit.com). She is on the board of the National Gallery of Jamaica and has published extensively on art and culture, including a biography of Stuart Hall (2020). Her blog Active Voice is at anniepaul.net and her twitter is @anniepaul.

Ashok Bery is Senior Lecturer in English at the London Metropolitan University where he teaches Postcolonial Literature and Theory, Twentieth-Century British and American Poetry, Romantic Poetry and Poetic Forms and Genres. In 2000 he published Comparing Postcolonial Literatures:

Bapsi Sidhwa is one of Pakistan's most prominent English fiction writers.

Bhavit Mehta has worked as a publisher, translator and festival director. He studied Biological Sciences and worked in a research environment at UCL before entering the world of children’s books in 2009, writing and publishing tales from India under his own imprint Saadhak Books .

Caryl Phillips is an internationally acclaimed writer whose work includes novels, television documentaries, and screenplays such as the adaptation of VS Naipaul’s The Mystic Masseur, for which he won the Silver Ombu for best screenplay at the Mar Del Plata Film Festival.

Cassie Lawrence is a journalist and content editor working with Wasafiri on our 40th Anniversary projects. She has worked for various literary organisations with a global outlook, including Saqi Books and Asia House.

As an author and scriptwriter for television, Claudia Piñeiro has won numerous national and international prizes, among them the renowned German LiBeraturpreis for Elena Knows and the prestigious Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize for Las grietas de Jara (A crack in the wall).

Cristina Rivera Garza is an author, translator and critic. Recent publications include Liliana’s Invincible Summer (Hogarth, 2023), which was long listed for the National Book Award in nonfiction. The Taiga Syndrome, trans. by Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana, (Dorothy Project, 2018), won the 2019 Shirley Jackson Award. Grieving. Dispatches from a Wounded Country, trans. by Sarah Booker (The Feminist Press, 2020), was a finalist National Book Critics Circle Award In Criticism. She is M.D. Anderson Distinguished Professor and founder of the PhD Program in Creative Writing in Spanish at the University of Houston, Department of Hispanic Studies, and a MacArthur Fellow 2020-2025.

David Dabydeen is a writer, critic and historian who first became known for his prize-winning collection of Creole poems, Slave Song (1984). His first novel, The Intended, was published in 1991 followed by Disappearance (1993) and The Counting House (1996).

David Johnson is senior lecturer at the Open University in English Literature. His publications include Shakespeare and South Africa (1996), Jurisprudence:

Dean Atta is a poet from London, UK. His debut collection, I Am Nobody’s Nigger, published by the Westbourne Press, was shortlisted for the Polari First Book Prize.

Denise DeCaires Narain is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities at the University of Sussex and has published widely on Caribbean women’s writing. Her book, Contemporary Caribbean Women’s Writing:

Diana Evans is the author of the novels A House for Alice, Ordinary People, The Wonder and 26a, which was the inaugural winner of the Orange Award for New Writers.

Durre Shahwar is a writer and Deputy Editor of Wasafiri. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Cardiff University on autofiction and marginalised identities. She is the co-editor of Gathering, an essay anthology of nature writing by women of colour (2024, 404 Ink).

Dushi Rasiah is a Tamil fiction editor and writer from London. Her writing explores cross-cultural relationships, inter-generational family dynamics and diasporic experiences. Her short stories have previously been longlisted for the Bryan MacMahon Short Story Award and published by Dear Damsels.

Elizabeth has a background working in arts organisations focusing on new writing, project management, and live literature events.

Elleke Boehmer is a writer, historian and critic. She is the author and editor of just under twenty books, including Stories of Women (2005), Postcolonial Poetics (2018), and a widely translated biography of Nelson Mandela (2008). Indian Arrivals 1870-1915:

Erin Brady is a self-employed translator who has spent her life moving between places.

Esme Godden is currently School Business Manager of the School of Arts & Creative Industries at University of East London. She has worked in the arts and creative sector for fifteen years, in a variety of roles from project and event management to recruitment and organisational development.

Eve Newstead is a writer from Newcastle Upon Tyne, with fiction twice-shortlisted for The Bridport Prize and published in Aayo Magazine. Typically, her writing explores northern identity, class, female mental health and sexual assault. Eve’s shortlisted piece is an extract from her first novel, for which she is seeking publication.

Farhaana Arefin is an editor and organiser based in London. She is a co-founder and co-publisher of Hajar Press and a consulting editor at Hurst Publishers.

Fiona Doloughan is a Lecturer in English (Literature and Creative Writing) in the Dept. of English at the Open University. Her research and teaching interests revolve around contemporary narrative; and issues of translation and creativity. She has published a monograph on Contemporary Narrative:

Florian Stadtler is Senior Lecturer in Literature and Migration at the University of Bristol. From 2010-2022 he was Reviews Editor of Wasafiri, after which he joined the Board of Trustees.

Foday Mannah hails from Sierra Leone and currently lives in Scotland, where he is employed as a teacher of English. He holds an MSc in International Conflict and Cooperation from the University of Stirling and an MA with Distinction in Professional Writing from Falmouth University.

Frances Riddle has translated numerous Spanish-language authors including Isabel Allende, Claudia Piñeiro, Leila Guerriero, and Sara Gallardo.

Franklin Nelson is a writer and editor at the Financial Times. A graduate of the University of Oxford, his work has been published by the TLS and WritersMosaic in the UK, and by Diário de Notícias and the Jornal de Letras in Portugal, among others.

Gary McKeone was Literature Director at Arts Council England from 1995-2006. Before that he worked with Field Day Theatre Company in Ireland and at the Royal Festival Hall on London's South Bank.

Gary Younge is an award-winning author, journalist, broadcaster and Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester. He is an editorial board member of The Nation, a Type Media Fellow and formerly editor-at-large for the Guardian.

Gloria Blizzard is a writer with deep interests in music, dance, science, race, culture, language and spirituality. She brings these perspectives to essays, poetry and reviews of music, dance and film.

Gopika Jadeja is a bilingual poet and translator, writing in English and Gujarati. Her literary writing and translations have been published widely. She is committed to translating writing from marginalised communities. Gopika is working on a project of English translations of poetry from Gujarat.

Haiyan Xie is an associate professor at Central China Normal University. She received her PhD in comparative literature at the University of Alberta. She has published several essays on Yan Lianke and is now working on her book project, tentatively titled “Mythorealism as Method: Form and Ideology in Yan Lianke’s Fiction.”

Hana Morgenstern is Associate Professor in Postcolonial and Middle Eastern Literature at Cambridge University and a Fellow at Newnham College.

Haniya Habib was born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan. Her work has appeared previously in Litro and Behenchara Magazine. She currently teaches comparative literature at Habib University in Karachi.

Heewon Chung is Professor of British Literature and Culture at the Institute for Urban Humanities, University of Seoul. Her research interests take up comparative literature and urban culture from the eighteenth century to the contemporary. She has published essays on Samuel Richardson, D A François de Sade, Virginia Woolf, Agnès Varda, Mona Hatoum, Shirin Neshat, and others.

Henghameh Saroukhani is Assistant Professor in Black British Literature at Durham University. She has published widely on contemporary black British and black Atlantic literatures and is co-editor of a recent special issue on the late Andrea Levy (ARIEL, 2022).

Hirsh Sawhney was joined the Wasafiri board in 2006. He is the editor of Delhi Noir, an anthology of brand-new fiction published by Akashic Books and HarperCollins India. He regularly writes for the Times Literary Supplement and The Guardian and is a Contributing Editor for The Brooklyn Rail.

Ilya Katrinnada is an educator, researcher, and writer with a geeky interest in the intersections of creativity, community, and culture. Her written works have been published by National Heritage Board (Singapore), National Library Board (Singapore), and Kitaab International, among others.

Ira Mathur is an Indian born Trinidadian journalist and columnist.

Isabel Waidner is a novelist based in London. They are the author of Corey Fah Does Social Mobility (2023), Sterling Karat Gold (2021), We Are Made of Diamond Stuff (2019), and Gaudy Bauble (2017). They are the winner of the Goldsmiths Prize 2021 and were shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize in 2019, the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction in 2022 and the Republic of Consciousness Prize in 2018, 2020 and 2022.

Jean Khalfa joined the Wasafiri Board in 2004 and in 2005 edited a special issue on the Algerian activist, writer and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, partly reproduced in translation in Les Temps Modernes, of which Khalfa is an editor.

A self-taught photographer and a fisherman from the indigenous Orang Seletar community residing in Johor Bahru, Malaysia, Jefree Salim uses photography to document the lives of his people, as well as their ever-changing environmental and cultural landscapes.

Jen Calleja is the author of Vehicle (Prototype, 2023), Dust Sucker (Makina Books, 2023) and the forthcoming critical memoir Goblinhood: goblin as a mode (Rough Trade Books, 2024).

Jennifer Wong is the author of 回家 Letters Home (Nine Arches Press, 2020). She has a PhD in creative writing from Oxford Brookes University where she works as an associate lecturer.

Jess Thayil’s work has appeared in Magma Poetry, Ink Sweat & Tears, Poetry Wales, The Seventh Quarry, Black Bough Poetry, PoetryNI, Poetry Ireland Review, The Tangerine Magazine, The Stinging Fly, AbstractMagazineTV, Whale Road Review and Potomac Review with more forthcoming elsewhere. She/They are of South Indian origins.

Born in Manila, Jim Pascual Agustin moved to Cape Town in 1994 and married the Canadian-South African woman he met while travelling in the Philippine North.

Jimin Kang is a Seoul-born, Hong Kong-raised, and England-based writer and journalist now studying environmental theory at the University of Oxford. Her work has previously been published in The New York Times, Asymptote , Off Assignment and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, among other outlets.

J.A. Mensah is a prose and theatre writer and a lecturer in English and Creative Writing at the University of York. She was a Leverhulme Artist in Residence at the Centre for Applied Human Rights and her plays have been produced by Pilot Theatre in York and Live Theatre in Newcastle, among others.

Juni is currently a PhD researcher in English Literature at the University of Kent writing about the narrativization of climate emergency in post-2008 American dystopias and utopias.

Karen McCarthy Woolf writes poetry, prose and radio drama. She is the editor of Bittersweet: Black Women’s Contemporary Poetry (1998) and Kin: New Fiction by Black and Asian Women (2004), both of which went on to form the basis of two nationwide tours.

Karthik Shankar is a PhD student in English at the University of Virginia. His PhD project focuses on queer theory and environmental humanities across South Asia and the Middle East. 

Kate Arthurs is director of strategy for the British Council’s global arts programme.

Kavita Bhanot is ECR Leverhulme Fellow at Leicester University.

Kayte Ferris has been writing on the internet since 2016. In her creative non-fiction she is interested in desire, knowing and emotional experience, exploring fundamental, and unanswerable, personal questions.

Khairani Barokka is a translator, editor, writer and artist from Jakarta, with over two decades of professional translation experience. In 2023, Okka was shortlisted for the Asian Women of Achievement Awards.

Kimberly McIntosh is a writer and researcher and is currently Senior Policy and Research Officer at Child Poverty Action Group.

Koni Benson is a historian, organiser, and educator based in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. She is a co-convener of the Revolutionary Papers project and the author of Crossroads:

Lalah-Simone Springer is a working-class poet, speculative fiction writer and digital marketing consultant.

Laura Jane Lee is a Hong Kong-born, Singapore-based poet. She is a winner of the Sir Roger Newdigate Prize and various international poetry competitions. Her work has been featured in The Straits Times, Tatler Asia, Poetry London, Ambit, QLRS, and the 52nd Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam. Laura Jane also works with the Asia Creative Writing Programme, and is Poetry Editor at SPLOOSH. She is also part of the poetry.sg team. Her most recent pamphlet flinch & air was published with Out-Spoken Press in 2021.

Laura Lynes is a writer living in London. Her writing has appeared in publications including Litro Magazine, SAND Journal and Stillpoint Magazine. She has been shortlisted for the London Magazine's Short Story Prize and received honourable mentions in the 2022 Berlin Writing Prize and the 2022 Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Competition. 

Laurie Bolger is a London-based writer and the founder of The Creative Writing Breakfast Club. Laurie’s work has been widely anthologised and has featured at Glastonbury, TATE and Sky Arts.

Layan Kayed is a Palestinian activist currently pursuing a master's degree in sociology at Birzeit University.

Leila Aboulela is the first-ever winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing. Nominated three times for the Orange Prize (now the Women’s Prize for Fiction), her novels include Bird Summons, The Kindness of Enemies, The Translator, a New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year, Minaret and Lyrics Alley, which was Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards.

Leon is Professor and Head of Art History at The Open University. Along with a range of edited and co-edited books on modern and contemporary art and aesthetics, museums and curating, cultural policy and anthropology.

Lizzy Attree is the co-founder of the Safal-Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Literature.

Louis James is now Emeritus Professor at the University of Kent, Canterbury. In the 1960s he taught at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica, and published widely in the fields of Victorian, Modern and Caribbean literature.

Lyn Innes is Emeritus Professor of Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent, Canterbury. Born and educated in Australia, she moved to North America and developed her interest in cultural nationalism, focusing on Irish, African, African American and Caribbean literatures.

Madeleine Ballard is a mixed-race writer from Aotearoa New Zealand. She is currently studying towards an MA in Creative Writing at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington.

Madeleine Thien's most recent book is Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which won The Giller Prize and a Governor-General’s Literary Award, and was shortlisted for The Booker Prize. Her writing can be found in The New Yorker, Granta, Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. 

Maggie Gee joined the Wasafiri Advisory Board in 2004. She is the writer of eleven novels, a collection of short stories, The Blue, and a memoir, My Animal Life (2010). Born in Poole, Dorset, she was one of the original 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'.

Mahvish Ahmad works on political organising and documentary practices in sites of disappearance, tracing circulating techniques of imperial and sovereign violence, as well as the material legacies of anti-colonial and left movements.

Mailé Nguyen is an academic and Vietnamese-American adoptee based in Chicago. They are pursuing an MA in Comparative Literature at SOAS University of London. Their research interests are in queer Korean literature, adoptee media, and transcultural consumption of gendered aesthetics.

Margaret Busby CBE, Hon. FRSL (Nana Akua Ackon) is a major cultural figure around the world. Her career has spanned work as a publisher, editor, interviewer, reviewer, scriptwriter, lyricist, radio and TV presenter, activist and mentor. 

The winner of a Pulitzer Prize for criticism, Margo Jefferson previously served as book and arts critic for Newsweek and the New York Times. Her writing has appeared in, among other publications, Vogue, New York Magazine, The Nation, and Guernica.

Marina Warner CBE is an eminent and prolific cultural critic and writer. Her non-fiction publications include Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (1976), Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (1985), which won the Fawcett Book Prize, Signs and Wonders:

Marral Shamshiri is a PhD candidate in international history at LSE. She is a co-editor of the book She Who Struggles: Revolutionary Women Who Shaped the World (Pluto, 2023).

Maung Htike Aung is a poet, literary translator and educator from Mandalay, Myanmar. He holds an MA in English from Yadanabon University and completed an online literary translation workshop at National Centre for Writing, UK.

Maya Caspari is a writer, curator, and lecturer at the University of York. Her forthcoming book is called Memory, Violence and the Politics of Touch in Contemporary World Literature.

Maya Jaggi was formerly Literary Editor of Third World Quarterly. She is a well known and highly respected feature writer and lead reviewer on international literature for The Guardian.

Meena Kandasamy has been described by the Independent as a ‘one-woman, agit-prop literary-political movement’. Meena Kandasamy is a poet, writer, translator, anti-caste activist and academic based in India. Her extensive corpus includes two poetry collections, Touch (2006) and Ms Militancy (2010), as well as three novels, The Gypsy Goddess (2014), When I Hit You (2017) and Exquisite Cadavers (2019).

Melanie Abrahams is the founder of the companies renaissance one and Tilt. She mentors emerging producers and lectures widely. She was the curator of Modern Love, a project exploring love and modern relationships which was nominated for an EMMA Award for Best Theatre/Play.

Merle Collins was born in Grenada and studied in Jamaica and the USA. After university, she served as a coordinator for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean with Maurice Bishop’s People’s Revolutionary Government in Grenada. During this time, her first works were published in Callaloo:

Mica Montana Gray, a trainee psychologist and writer, passionately explores life’s diverse stories. Her writing can be found in ‘Postscript’, ‘The Color of madness’ anthology and her poetry collection ‘When Daisies Talk’ which explores her personal experiences of mental health. Presently, she curates a newsletter exploring faith, culture, and wellbeing.

Michael McMillan is a playwright, writer and curator/artist.

Mimi Khalvati was born in Tehran, Iran, grew up on the Isle of Wight and went to the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland. Having worked both as an actor and director in Britain and Iran, Khalvati founded Matrix, a women’s experimental theatre group and was co-founder of Theatre in Exile.

Minoli Salgado is a writer and academic who teaches English literature at the University of Sussex. Born in Malaysia, raised in Sri Lanka and South East Asia and educated mainly in England, she has published widely on migrant studies and diasporic literature. She is the author of Writing Sri Lanka:

Molly Slight is Editorial Director at Scribe UK, an award-winning international independent publisher. She commissions and edits literary fiction and narrative non-fiction, as well as being part of the management team.

Nadia Atia is a Reader in Postcolonial and Global Literature at Queen Mary University of London.

Naomi Wells is a researcher at the Institute of Modern Languages Research (School of Advanced Study, University of London).

Nazry Bahrawi is an assistant professor of Southeast Asian literature and culture at University of Washington in Seattle. He specialises in the decolonial work of articulating Malay-Indonesian vernacular knowledge in cultural studies expressed through literature, film, and art.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o is one of Kenya’s best known novelists and activists who campaigns for ‘cultural decolonisation’ in Africa’s educational institutions and the promotion of African languages — the subject of many of his essays including those that appear in Decolonising the Mind (1986)…

Nick Makoha was Shortlisted for the 2017 Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection for his debut poetry collection Kingdom of Gravity. He is a Cave Canem Graduate Fellow and Complete Works Alumni.

Nikesh Shukla's debut novel, Coconut Unlimited, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award 2010. Alongside his second novel, Meatspace, Nikesh has written for The Guardian, Esquire, Buzzfeed, Vice and BBC2, LitHub, Guernica and BBC Radio 4.

Nneoma Kenure is a Nigerian writer interested in the intersections of gender, media and culture. She is currently editing a collection of short stories on everyday epiphanies that change the course of lives.

Nuraliah Norasid is a writer and educator, with a PhD in Creative Writing from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), where she currently teaches writing and inquiry.

Pete Ayrton was born in London in 1943. His first jobs in publishing was as a translator from French and Italian and, then, as an editor for Pluto Press. In 1986, he founded Serpent's Tail, an independent publisher with a commitment to publish innovative fiction in translation.

Princess Arinola Adegbite is a poet, performance artist, Author of Soft Tortures, Factory International, Youth Music, and MOBO Help Musicians funded musician and filmmaker from Manchester. Bitez is also a member of Young Identity and The Writing Squad.

Rachael Gilmour is a Lecturer in Postcolonial Studies at Queen Mary, University of London. Much of her research focuses on issues of language, translation, and linguistic encounter in colonial and postcolonial contexts from 18th- and 19th-century South Africa to contemporary multilingual Britain.

Ranjana Khanna is Professor of English and Director of Women’s Studies at Duke University. She works on Anglo- and Francophone postcolonial theory and literature, psychoanalysis, and feminist theory.

Reece Williams is a towering presence on the UK’s northern spoken word and poetry scene. He joined poetry collective Young Identity in 2007, performing across the UK and internationally with the likes of Saul Williams, Kae Tempest, The Last Poets and the late Amiri Baraka.

Rehana Ahmed is Senior Lecturer in Postcolonial and Contemporary Literature at Queen Mary University of London.

Rishi Dastidar’s poetry has been published by the Financial Times and BBC amongst many others. He is a fellow of The Complete Works, a consulting editor at The Rialto magazine, a member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen, and chair of writer development organization Spread The Word.

Rituparna Mondal is one of the Assistant Editorial Interns at Wasafiri. She is a second year Ph.D. student in the School of English at the University of Kent.

Roba AlSalibi is a Palestinian researcher at the University of Oxford.

Robert Fraser is the author of several monographs, including studies of Sir James Frazer, Proust, Victorian quest literature and postcolonial fiction.

Romesh Gunesekera grew up in Sri Lanka and the Phillipines before moving to England in 1971. He is the author of various novels and short stories.

Sadia Khatri is a writer. Her fiction and nonfiction is often about cities, dreams, gender; walking and poetry; grief and God. She is a filmmaker and translator for Amrit Pyala, a project archiving Sufi and Bhakti poetry in Pakistan. Sadia lives in Karachi, and is writing her first book. Author photo courtesy of the author

Having previously worked as Digital Editor and Deputy Editor at Wasafiri, Sana was formerly Publicity Manager at Tilted Axis Press and Marketing and Outreach Officer at Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal.

Sanah Ahsan is a poet, liberation psychologist, writer, educator and presenter. She won the Outspoken Poetry Performance Prize (2019) and shortlisted for The White Review Poetry Prize (2022); Bridport Poetry Prize (2021). Her non-fiction writing has been featured by The Guardian.

Saraid de Silva (she/her) is Sri Lankan/ Pākehā and lives in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. Among other things, Saraid has been an actor, bartender, theatre-maker, fairy light installer, voiceover artist, and nanny. She currently works as a TV writer. Amma is her first novel.

Sebastian Partogi is an Indonesian writer and journalist based in Ubud, Bali. As a literary translator, he has translated the works of Indonesian writers like Ratih Kumala, Djenar Maesa Ayu, Feby Indirani, Angelina Enny and Sindhunata into English.

Shalvi Jaxay Shah is a writer, translator, and critic. Born and raised in Gujarat, India, she now divides her time between New York City and Ahmedabad.

Shere Ross is writer based in the United Kingdom. Her work includes short stories and other works of fiction, which have been shortlisted for several prizes including the Wasafiri New Writing Prize. She is a winner of BlackInk Writing Prize.

Shirley Camia is the Filipina-Canadian author of four poetry collections, including the award-winning Children Shouldn’t Use Knives and Mercy. 

Shivanee Ramlochan is a Trinidadian poet, essayist, and critic. Her debut collection, Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting (Peepal Tree Press, 2017), was short-listed for the 2018 Forward Prize for Best First Collection.

Silvia Rothlisberger is a Colombian journalist and writer based in London. Her work has been published in The White Review, Latin American Bureau, Minor Literature[s], Firmament Magazine, and others. She works in editorial at The Guardian.

Simon Gikandi is Professor of English at Princeton University. He is the recipient of numerous awards from organisations such as the American Council of Learned Societies, the Mellon Foundation, and the Guggenheim Fellowship.

SJ Kim is the author of This Part Is Silent (W.W. Norton, 2024). Born in Korea and raised in the American South, she resides in the UK and teaches creative writing at the University of Warwick.

So Mayer is a writer, publisher, bookseller, organiser and film curator.

Sohini Basak’s first poetry collection We Live in the Newness of Small Differences was awarded the inaugural International Beverly Manuscript Prize and published in 2018. In 2017, she received a Toto Funds the Arts award. Based in Barrackpore India, she works as an editor.

Stephanie Jones is an Associate Professor in English at the School of Humanities, University of Southampton. She works on literature about marine and maritime worlds, with a particular focus on the Indian Ocean.

Sukhdev Sandhu joined Wasafiri's Board in 2004 when he edited the highly regarded ‘Focus on Film’ issue (Winter 2004). Sandhu gained his doctorate from Oxford University and teaches at New York University.

Susie Thornberry is a writer, producer, and artistic director. Her creative work has been presented with Battersea Arts Centre, WOMAD, BBC Radio 6 Music, and many others.

Tabish Khair was educated mostly in Bihar, India. After working as a journalist for The Times of India in Delhi, he joined academia in Denmark via the usual immigrant process of washing dishes, painting houses etc.

Teresa Cherukara is a writer based in Dubai. She has been published by London Library Magazine, Taleem , and the Oxford University Press. Teresa was an India Scholar at King’s College London, where she graduated with a MA in Comparative Literature.

Tessa McWatt is a novelist, screenwriter and librettist. She is the author of six novels and a novella for young adults. Her second novel,  Dragons Cry,  was shortlisted for the City of Toronto Book Awards and the Governor General Awards of Canada.

Theodora Danek lives in Vienna. Previously a project manager and managing editor at English PEN, Tilted Axis, and The White Review, she now writes, edits, and solves publishing problems on demand.

Tiffany Tsao is a writer and literary translator. She is the author of the novel The Majesties (originally published in Australia as Under Your Wings) and the Oddfits fantasy trilogy (so far, The Oddfits and The More Known World).

Vicky Unwin has had a long career in media and publishing. Born in Dar es Salaam she has worked in Africa for the majority of her career, spanning 13 years at Heinemann Educational Books where she was Publisher of the African, Caribbean and Asian Writers Series.

Vimbai Shire is an independent editor, book designer and founder of Beyond White Space Ltd, which has provided project management, editorial and design services and training to publishers, businesses, institutions and individuals in the UK and internationally since 2007.

William Tham Wai Liang, based in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, was formerly Senior Editor at Vancouver’s  Ricepaper  magazine. His newest novel,  The Last Days , is set in 1981 and covers the continuing legacy of the Malayan Emergency.

Y-Dang Troeung (張依蘭) (ទ្រឿងអ៊ីដាង) was a deeply loved mother, researcher, writer, and Assistant Professor of English at the University of British Columbia. Her first book, Refugee Lifeworlds: The Afterlife of the Cold War in Cambodia, explored the enduring impact of war, genocide and displacement. She co-directed the short film Easter Epic and organized the exhibition Remembering Cambodian Border Camps, 40 Years Later at Phnom Penh's Bophana Center. She died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 42.

Yan Lianke is the author of the memoir Three Brothers and numerous novels and novellas, including Hard Like Water, The Day the Sun Died, The Explosion Chronicles, The Four Books, Lenin’s Kisses, Serve the People!, Dream of Ding Village, and The Years, Months, Days.

Yaser Hassan Ali is from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. He works as a lecturer at the College of Languages at the University of Duhok and as a visiting lecturer at Nawroz University.

Dr Yvonne Battle-Felton is an author, academic, host, creative producer, and writer. She won the Northern Writers Award in fiction in 2017. Remembered, her debut novel, was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction (2019) and shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize (2020).

Zoe Norridge is a Lecturer in English and Comparative Literature at King’s College London. Her research currently focuses on cultural responses to genocide in Rwanda. In April 2014 she curated the exhibition "Rwanda in Photographs: