Wasafiri Magazine

Thinking of all those affected in our community and beyond during this difficult time.

Read a range of African writing; interviews with prizewinning writers on how literary and political practices intersect; and our usual mix of poetry, reviews, fiction, life writing, and articles. We also present here the 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize-winning pieces.

The 125th issue of Wasafiri is now available to order! Edited by our Deputy Editor, Vamika Sinha, Wasafiri 125 is a general issue that explores 'Living in the Melancholony'.

Order now: buff.ly/f3ZXtCo

LAHP Placement Opportunities with Wasafiri Opportunities are available for LAHP-funded PhD students to join Wasafiri on placements this year.

We're recruiting 2 LAHP-funded PhD students for editorial and literary prize placements. We are also open to receiving speculative placement applications proposing a specific project aligned with our work.

buff.ly/vHzUk5y

Deadline: Midnight, 30 March

Monarch butterflies on a tree. Title below reads 'Meditations – Esther King on Leo Boix's Southernmost: Sonnets' with a subheading reading 'Wasafiri 124 online exclusive'

@esthermavis.bsky.social reads Leo Boix's collection SOUTHERNMOST SONNETS (Chatto & Windus 2025), reflecting on the 'push and pull of belonging to different places' and how it has shaped her understandings of home, geography, partnership, family, and grief.

Read: www.wasafiri.org/content/medi...

A Union of One’s Own: Fossil Free Books and the Society of Authors Can a group of grassroots campaigners collaborate with a 140-year-old trade union that is resistant to change?

Just got round to reading this absolutely crucial piece by @noreenmasud.bsky.social and Martin Reed in @wasafirimag.bsky.social about the work of Fossil Free Books and the attempts by the Society of Authors to stifle them

Meditations — Esther King on Leo Boix's Southernmost: Sonnets Esther King finds kinship in Argentine British poet Leo Boix's Southernmost:

I wrote a piece for Wasafiri about living in multiple languages and finding home. With thanks to the thoughtful editors at @wasafirimag.bsky.social

www.wasafiri.org/content/medi...

2026 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize: Open for Entries Since 2009, when it was inaugurated by our Founding Editor Dr. Susheila Nasta…

The 2026 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize is open for entries across poetry, life writing, and fiction, including translated work, until 30 June. Submit your entry: buff.ly/vmE2t6l

Shortlisted for last year's New Writing Prize, Naomi Madlock's poem brings a body with disabilities to a riverbank, where nature's treasures – 'a flap of algae', 'domestic waste', 'sunlight/seeping through a porcelain shard' – assemble a sense of wholeness and peace.

Read here: buff.ly/U5SA51J

We are thrilled to announce that the 2025 Wasafiri Essay Prize has been awarded to Gavin Herbertson for his rigorous, sophisticated essay, 'Interleafing the Philoctetes Figure: Derek Walcott’s Omeros and The Isle is Full of Noises'.

Full announcement: buff.ly/kYDJvYK

I've got a short story in this, "Anciens Combattants," about the Thiaroye massacre

Our spring issue, Wasafiri 125, is now available to read for our digital subscribers and those with access to Taylor & Francis!

buff.ly/rk3PyK4

This general issue is edited by our Deputy Editor Vamika Sinha, with an Editorial titled ‘Living in the Melancholony’.

Excellent opportuntity for CHASE funded doctoral researchers to work with the team at Wasafiri Magazine. Placement at a long-established arts organisation offering editorial and submissions experience, plus opportunities in events and design - deadline 26 February - hurry, not long to apply!

Thanks to all who joined us for the official launch party for Wasafiri 124: Presencia y Resistencia — British Latinx Writing & Art in London this month ❣️

The issue is available to purchase anytime here: buff.ly/U6N26fQ

📷 Photography by James Clifford Kent

For anyone who is UK-based and interested, SOAS has a PhD scholarship for ‘Queer Meaning-Making in South Asian Literature: New Comparative Perspectives’.

Scholarship application deadline: 27 March 2026.

www.soas.ac.uk/study/studen...

@saltatchicago.bsky.social @wasafirimag.bsky.social

Opportunity: CHASE Editorial Placement at Wasafiri An opportunity is available for a CHASE-funded PhD student to join Wasafiri on a year-long editorial placement.

Apply for an editorial placement at Wasafiri!
If you're a CHASE-funded PhD student in the UK in the humanities, this is a great opportunity to learn more about magazine publishing, academic journals, the literary industry, etc.

Apply by 26 Feb: buff.ly/QDOrI7U

New on the website: Yessica Klein's two poems, 'I'd Like You To Meet The Brazilian Sun' and '1989,' explore different aspects of Brazilianness with humour, nostalgia, pain, and frustration at once — where the 'Sun always has a joint', but fair governance can feel unreachable.

Read: buff.ly/lHxodD7

In Raluca David's life writing, colonies of mould settle into her family's apartments – from the UK to Germany – mirroring the growingly hostile, anti-immigrant atmosphere. Shortlisted for the 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize.

Read: buff.ly/F75Rm6t

Buy the magazine, it’s a really good read. ♥️ 👍🏽🍃

As the 5050Collective's recent 'Design beyond Eurocentrism' post states: 'Plastic chairs are the unofficial infrastucture of the Global South.'

buff.ly/KGVMTiX

We're so excited to share the rest of this issue with you — orders open soon!

The plastic stool – inexpensive, cute, striking – feels fitting to an issue that travels so wide. This functional piece of nostalgia symbolises migrant connections across Africa, Asia, & beyond — from Vietnamese noodle stalls to Nigerian markets.

Introducing the cover of Wasafiri's 125th issue, which explores 'Living in the Melancholony'.

The cover artwork is from German Vietnamese artist Sung Tieu's 2020 installation 'Zugzwang'; Tieu's work is also part of this issue's Art piece.

📣 Whether you've just read a piece on our website or attended even one of our events, we want to hear from you ... please fill out our 5-minute readership survey to help a small arts organisation like ours grow and improve our work.

buff.ly/rjbCDiF

A new Valentine's essay: Kareena Gianani's life writing piece explores what long-distance love can look like in a globalised world — where migration is a constant, smartphones shape relationships, and rooms gather meaning the more that they change.

Read: buff.ly/lgJzVMo

Join us for the online launch of TENDRILS: ECOPOETICS OF COMMUNITY AND JUSTICE, an anthology edited and introduced by fieldnotes collective, gathering a range of international voices that entangle, illuminate, and resist.

Free tickets: buff.ly/tpDDbhO

James Clifford Kent has photographed Cuba for over 20 years, capturing the resilience, endurance, and survival of an increasingly threadbare Revolution.

Read the Art piece on this body of work in the latest issue of Wasafiri: buff.ly/ppFKuhH

Huddle away from the gloomy weather with a Slow Poetry writing workshop hosted by our Writer-in-Residence, Cara Thompson, on Tuesday, 17 February.

Book your spot: buff.ly/4RWaI6u

Cara will also be hosting another workshop next month; if you'd like to attend both, we are offering a discounted pass

Since everyone wants to learn Spanish after Bad Bunny made it cool, how about this timely event celebrating poetry in London?

@wasafirimag.bsky.social is surging the zeitgeist magnificently!

Join us for a free event at @cervanteslondon.bsky.social for an evening of readings by three Latinx poets – Patrizia Longhitano, José Buera, and Luisa de la Concha Montes – hosted by poet and co-editor of Wasafiri’s Presencia y Resistencia issue, Leo Boix.

Book now: buff.ly/oW6WbNm

Love this snap of me from last night’s @wasafirimag.bsky.social launch. Knackered but happy.