Submit your work
Submit to Wasafiri
For 40 years, Wasafiri has published the very best international contemporary writing, placing critics alongside leading novelists, poets, and playwrights to generate exciting cross-genre and inter-regional conversations. We welcome innovative creative and critical writing that, in form, focus, or theme, seeks to expand the boundaries of global literary culture.
Fiction, life writing, and poetry: Closed
We will be open for creative submissions in Fiction, Life Writing, and Poetry on the following specific themes from 4-22 November, 2024.
- Community, Solidarity, and Justice
- Healing and Repair
- Dystopias and Aftermaths
We are also interested in work that is/on multilingualism, narrative-driven life writing, and work explicitly engaging with questions of genre, including speculative, crime, horror, and romance fiction. We also invite proposals for special guest-edited issues of Wasafiri. Please get in touch with our Editor and Publishing Director Sana Goyal ([email protected]) if you are interested in guest-editing an issue on a theme within your area of expertise, to be published from 2027. Please take a look at past issues on our website to gain an understanding of the types of themes and areas we cover.
Please see below for further details on word count and fees.
We are highly selective in what we publish. We ask you to ensure that your manuscript is thematically, structurally, conceptually, and grammatically polished before submission. Above all, we look for submissions that are thoughtful and nuanced, formally outstanding, and profoundly absorbing.
We are a small, part-time team, and everything we publish is additionally assessed by external peer reviewers. For these reasons, we expect to make decisions on work submitted within a six month period. Thank you for your patience while we work as quickly as we can, while also taking the time to give your work the attention it deserves.
All submissions must be submitted via our online submissions portal.
Critical articles and interviews: Open
We invite submissions of critical articles and interviews year-round. All submissions must be submitted via our online submissions portal.
Wasafiri is a peer–reviewed journal and listed in the Clarivate Analytics’ Arts & Humanities Citation Index. We are seeking conceptually rigorous, substantially researched, and accessibly presented articles and essays engaged with any genre of contemporary literature. The magazine particularly welcomes articles that position new critical perspectives within one or more broader contexts.
We aim to make a decision within nine to twelve months, allowing time for mutually-anonymous double peer review.
Reviews: Closed
If you are a publisher, please post review copies to the address below, or email details to [email protected]. Unfortunately we cannot guarantee that we will be able to review every title we receive.
Please post review copies to: Reviews Editor, Wasafiri c/o School of English and Drama, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS, UK
Word Length
Critical articles and essays | 6,000 – 9,000 words |
Fiction, life writing | 3,000 – 5,000 words |
Interviews | 4,000 – 5,000 words |
Book reviews of one or two titles | 900 – 1,100 words |
Poems | Maximum of 3 totalling up to 6 pages |
Payment
Wasafiri pays for all creative submissions and reviews. The below fees are an indication only of a typical fee offered for publication in the magazine.
Fiction and life writing | £150 |
Interviews (transcribed and edited) | £150 |
Poems | £50 |
Book reviews | £50 |
Review Essays | £125 |
Inclusivity
Wasafiri is committed to publishing work that represents the world and creating an inclusive global community of writers and readers. Central to this is our unwavering commitment to equality and advocacy for underrepresented and marginalised voices. We do not discriminate on the grounds of age, gender, nationality, race, or sexuality. While we welcome a diversity of opinions and topics in our pages, the validity of the identities of our writing and reading community is not up for debate. In particular, we affirm and support the rights and dignity of transgender, non-binary, and gender diverse people the world over. We seek to publish writers with compatible core values.
If you have queries about the submissions process, you can contact us here. All submissions must be submitted via our online submissions portal.