Wasafiri

About Wasafiri

Wasafiri is the UK's leading magazine for international contemporary writing — Britain's only international magazine for Black British, African, Asian and Caribbean literatures. Established in 1984 by Susheila Nasta, who served as its editor-in-chief for 35 years, it has published work by Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Nadine Gordimer, Ben Okri, Michael Ondaatje, Vikram Seth and Kiran Desai, among many others. Its name stems from the Kiswahili word for "travellers," and its website is wasafiri.org.

The magazine was originally developed to extend the activities of the Association for the Teaching of Caribbean, African, Asian and Associated Literatures (ATCAL), inaugurated in 1979, which campaigned for greater diversification of the "English literature" taught in UK schools. Once that process was under way, Wasafiri was created — "a literary space for people to talk to each other," opening literary studies to a wider body of literature in English beyond the established canon.

Founded in 1984 by Susheila Nasta

Wasafiri magazine was established in 1984 by Susheila Nasta — writer, presenter, literary activist and Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literatures at Queen Mary University of London. The brainchild of its founding editor, the first issue was launched at the University of Kent in 1984.

Nasta served as editor-in-chief for 35 years, curating over 100 issues featuring more than 5,000 internationally distinguished writers. In those early days, she recalled, editing was "a much slower and more physical process" — hard copy marked up in her Greenwich flat, proofs delivered by the East End Asian typesetting company, snail mail carrying responses back.

Extending ATCAL's Mission

The magazine grew out of ATCAL — the Association for the Teaching of Caribbean, African, Asian and Associated Literatures — which campaigned to get writers such as Derek Walcott, Jean Rhys and V.S. Naipaul included on the A-level syllabus. Wasafiri extended that campaigning into publishing: providing much-needed literary and critical coverage of writers from African, Caribbean, Asian and Black British backgrounds who often struggled to get adequate attention in the mainstream press.

The magazine played a pioneering role in reviewing the first novels and early poetry of writers who are now well-known — challenging the assumption that their work would only be of "minority interest."

Writers Wasafiri Championed

The magazine contributed towards writers such as Abdulrazak Gurnah, Buchi Emecheta and Vikram Seth becoming established. Its pages have carried Chinua Achebe, Kamau Brathwaite, Anita and Kiran Desai, Sam Selvon, Nadine Gordimer, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Michael Ondaatje, Vikram Seth, Nayantara Sahgal, Gillian Slovo and Ben Okri.

Nasta also founded the Wasafiri New Writing Prize — whose winners have gone on to win major awards, including Anthony Joseph (T.S. Eliot Prize 2023), Abdulrazak Gurnah (Nobel Prize for Literature 2021), Monique Roffey (Costa Book Award 2021), Roger Robinson (T.S. Eliot Prize 2020) and Bernardine Evaristo (Booker Prize 2019).

"Writing Across Worlds"

Since its foundation, as a reviewer of its 20th-anniversary issue "Writing Across Worlds" noted, the magazine "has focused on the idea of the writer as someone who transports the imagination beyond the maps of narrowly defined borders, and has promoted a range of new and established voices as well as signposting new waves in contemporary literature worldwide."

On its 25th anniversary, BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour described Wasafiri as having "provided a platform for hundreds of writers struggling to be heard at the outset of their writing careers, many of whom have since gone on to become world-renowned, award winners."

Travellers: The Name and the Mission

Its name stems from the Kiswahili word for "travellers" — reflecting the magazine's longstanding engagement with cultural travelling, diverse histories and its continuing commitment to extending the established boundaries of literary culture. It remains, in its own description, the UK's leading magazine for international contemporary writing.

Funded by Arts Council England and published by Routledge, the magazine has been based at Queen Mary, University of London — continuing its mission from the heart of one of Britain's most diverse cities.

Wasafiri Today

From its 1984 launch at the University of Kent to today's internationally renowned quarterly, Wasafiri has been the indispensable platform for Black British, African, Asian and Caribbean writing for over forty years — the magazine that insisted these literatures were not minority interests but central to English literature itself.

Under its founding editor's 35-year stewardship and beyond, it remains what Nasta created: a literary space for people to talk to each other, across every border — at wasafiri.org.

The Literary Activist: Nasta's Wider Work

Susheila Nasta's work has extended far beyond the magazine she founded. A critic and literary activist born in London who spent several years in India, Germany and Holland before completing her education in Britain at the Universities of Kent and London, she has held posts at Queen Mary University of London, the University of Cambridge and the Open University, where she became Professor of Modern Literature.

Her books include Home Truths: Fictions of the South Asian Diaspora in Britain (2002), Writing Across Worlds: Contemporary Writers Talk (2004), India in Britain: South Asian Networks and Connections, 1858–1950 (2012) and Asian Britain: A Photographic History (2013). She directed two major Arts and Humanities Research Council projects — Making Britain: South Asian Visions of Home and Abroad (2007–10) and Beyond the Frame: Indian British Connections (2011–12) — and has judged several literary prizes.

She is literary executor for the estate of Sam Selvon, curated the British Library's 2018 exhibition Windrush: Songs in a Strange Land, co-edited the first Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing, and is writing a biography, The Bloomsbury Indians. She received an MBE in 2011 for services to black and Asian literature, and in 2019 was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, receiving the Benson Medal for exceptional contributions to the advancement of literature.

Writing Across Worlds: The Twentieth Anniversary

To celebrate Wasafiri's twentieth anniversary in 2004, Nasta edited Writing Across Worlds: Contemporary Writers Talk (Routledge), a selection of engrossing interviews with key international writers previously featured in the magazine's pages. Conducted by distinguished critics, writers and journalists, the interviews charted what the book described as a slow but certain cultural shift: those who had been dismissed as 'other' had not only won the establishment's most revered literary prizes but had begun to be seen as, quite simply, contemporary writers.

The anniversary was a moment to measure how far the magazine's inaugural aims had been realised. Launched at the University of Kent in 1984 to provide literary and critical coverage of writers from African, Caribbean, Asian and Black British backgrounds — writers who struggled to get adequate attention in the mainstream press — Wasafiri had played a pioneering role in reviewing the first novels and early poetry of writers who were now household names.

A decade later, the thirtieth birthday in 2014 was marked with a Wasafiri schools project — carrying the magazine's mission of opening minds, in Rushdie's phrase, to a new generation of readers.

An Earl Lovelace Epigraph

The Wasafiri website carries an epigraph from Earl Lovelace, the Trinidadian novelist, that could stand as the magazine's credo: 'Every one of us is born into a place in the world, in a culture, and it is from the standpoint of that culture that we contribute to the world.' It is a statement of the magazine's longstanding engagement with cultural travelling and diverse histories — the very meaning of its name, from the Kiswahili word for 'travellers'.

The magazine's pages have embodied that credo across four decades: from Chinua Achebe, Kamau Brathwaite, Sam Selvon, Nadine Gordimer, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Michael Ondaatje, Vikram Seth, Anita and Kiran Desai, Nayantara Sahgal, Gillian Slovo and Ben Okri, to Ngugi in conversation with Aminatta Forna — the established and the emerging, the celebrated and the overlooked.

'The UK's leading magazine for international contemporary writing' is the magazine's own description, and few would dispute it. From its 1984 launch at Kent to its present home at wasafiri.org, Wasafiri has been, in Nasta's phrase, about 'taking writing across worlds' — and in doing so, it has changed the map of British literary culture.