Submit to Wasafiri

For over 35 years, Wasafiri has published the very best works of and on international contemporary writing and culture, 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.  

All submissions to the magazine must be submitted via our online submissions portal, except for reviews which should be sent directly to the reviews editor. Please refer to our style guide in formatting your submission. 

Fiction, life writing, and poetry: autumn 2021 submissions window

We are receiving submissions of fiction, life writing, and poetry during September and October 2021, closing at 5pm GMT on 31 October 2021. 

We are highly selective in what we publish, accepting less than 5% of creative work submitted in our most recent submissions window. Make sure 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. You can browse the fiction and poetry published on our website for examples of the quality of work that we publish.  

We are a small, part-time team, and everything we publish is additionally assessed by external readers. For these reasons, we expect to issue decisions on work submitted this autumn in February-March 2022. Thank you for your patience while we work as quickly as we can, while taking the time to give your work the attention it deserves. Work selected for publication from this submissions window will appear in Wasafiri from 2023.

Critical articles and essays

We invite submissions of critical articles and essays, reviews, and interviews year-round. 

Wasafiri is a peer–reviewed journal and listed in the Clarivate Analytics’ Arts & Humanities Citation Index. We are seeking conceptually rigorous, substantially researched, accessibly presented articles and essays engaged with any genre of contemporary literature, from writers across disciplines. The magazine particularly welcomes articles that position new critical perspectives within one or more broader contexts.  

We aim to make an initial decision on a manuscript within three months of submission, and a final decision within six months, allowing time for mutually-anonymous double peer review.

Read some examples of some of our favourite recent essays and articles here: 

• ‘Whitely’: Race and Lyric Subjectivity in Clare Pollard’s Poetry by Kayo Chingonyi 
• Nunca Invisibles: Insurgent Memory and Self-representation by Female Ex-combatants in Colombia by Cherilyn Elston 
• Out of the George Padmore Institute Archive: Venetta Ross, John La Rose and the Creation of New Roots in the West Indies by Alexa Hazel 
• ‘Room’ by Claire Hynes 
• An Island of Whiteness: Rereading Penelope Lively’s Oleander, Jacaranda by Emma Parker 

Reviews

If you are interested in reviewing for Wasafiri, please contact the Reviews Editor and include a recent sample of your writing (preferably a book review), as well as a short CV, and contact details. There will always be a list of titles we are keen to review, though we welcome suggestions of other titles.

If you are a publisher, please post review copies to the address below, or email details to wasafiri.reviews@qmul.ac.uk.  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

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. 

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. 

All submissions must be submitted via our online submissions portal except for reviews which should be sent directly to the reviews editor