Nikesh Shukla is a novelist and screenwriter. He is the author of Coconut Unlimited (shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award), Meatspace and the critically acclaimed The One Who Wrote Destiny. Nikesh is the editor of the

bestselling essay collection, The Good Immigrant, which won the reader’s choice at the Books Are My Bag Awards. He co-edited The Good Immigrant USA with Chimene Suleyman. He is the author of two YA novels, Run, Riot (shortlisted for a National Book Award) and The Boxer (longlisted for the Carnegie Medal). Nikesh was one of Time Magazine’s cultural leaders, Foreign Policy magazine’s 100 Global Thinkers and The Bookseller’s 100 most influential people in publishing in 2016 and in 2017. He is the co-founder of The Good Literary Agency. Nikesh’s new book, Brown Baby: A Memoir Of Race, Family And Home was released on Bluebird in February 2021. He has also written a book on writing called Your Story Matters.

Florian Stadtler was formerly Wasafiri‘s Reviews Editor. He currently works at the University of Bristol as a Lecturer in English with Migration Mobilities Bristol. He has also published extensively on South Asian British history, including the case of Udham Singh, Aubrey Menen, South Asian soldiers in the First and Second World Wars, and South Asian seafarers. He has edited special issues for Wasafiri: The Magazine of International Contemporary Writing – India in Britain: Cross-Cultural Encounters, which highlights the vibrant South Asian publishing culture of 1930s-40s Britain; and a special issue on Writing Hong Kong (co-edited with Jeffrey Mather). He is currently completing the editing of a major new collection of essays for Cambridge University Press, Salman Rushdie in Context.

Kavita Bhanot is ECR Leverhulme Fellow at Leicester University. She wrote the landmark essay ‘Decolonise not Diversify’ in 2015. She has edited three short-story collections, including Too Asian, not Asian Enough and Book of Birmingham, and co-founded the Literature Must Fall collective and festival, with whom she organises reading groups and events. She is an editor with Media Diversified, for whom she curates essays under Literature Must Fall. Kavita is writing a book with Pluto Press on Literature Must Fall as a new paradigm for reading and writing and is co-editing, with Jeremy Tiang, an anthology on decolonising translation (Tilted Axis). Her translation of short stories by Anjali Kajal won a 2021 Pen Translates award and will be published by Comma Press in 2022.  She won third prize in the SI Leeds Literary Prize in 2018. For the last ten years she has been a reader and mentor with The Literary Consultancy, with whom she runs workshops with publishers on ethical editing, drawing on her research. 

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. Her short stories have appeared in The Book of Newcastle (Comma Press), New Narratives for the North East (New Writing North), and Test Signal (Dead Ink and Bloomsbury). Her debut novel, Castles from Cobwebs (Saraband), was longlisted for the 2021 Desmond Elliott Prize and won the inaugural NorthBound Book Award. Prior to her academic roles she worked in the arts and cultural sector in creative, project management and governance roles for organisations including Helix Arts, Arts Council England, and Brixton House (formerly Ovalhouse Theatre).

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. His first book, Kings of Petaling Street, was shortlisted for the Penang Monthly Book Prize.

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.

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. She currently lives and works in Singapore.

Nazry Bahrawi is a literary critic, translator and academic. He specialises in the comparative study of texts, thoughts and traditions between the Malay Archipelago and the Arab world. Nazry is Senior Lecturer of Comparative and World Literature at Singapore University of Technology and Design. He has translated two Bahasa literary works to English.

Naomi Wells is a researcher at the Institute of Modern Languages Research (School of Advanced Study, University of London). She researches on migration and multilingualism in Spanish- and Italian-speaking contexts, with a particular focus on everyday practices of linguistic and cultural translation.

Naomi has worked as a researcher on two large Arts and Humanities Research Council funded projects: ‘Transnationalizing Modern Languages: Mobility, Identity and Translation in Modern Italian Cultures’ and ‘Cross-Language Dynamics: Reshaping Community’. Her recent publications have focused on translingual and transcultural practices and identities among migrant communities in Italy and Chile. Her current research explores the role of digital media and technologies in relation to diasporic cultures and communities.