Published as part of the Queen Mary Wasafiri Global Dispatches series, the 2020 Booker-Prize-shortlisted writer of Burnt Sugar, Avni Doshi, reflects on Childcare and Covid-19.

The Hong Kong-born, Oxford-based poet, writer, and translator – most recently of the collection, 回家 Letters Home – joins Wasafiri.

Sending dispatches from around the world – writing from Tasmania and South Africa, the UAE and Argentina, England and Canada – six writers reflect on themes of Climate, Justice, Childcare, Racism, Future, and Isolation—all in the context of Covid-19.

An extract from an essay originally published in the catalogue for Scenes from the South (Makhanda: Amazwi South African Museum of Literature, 2020), an international travelling exhibition to mark J.M. Coetzee’s 80^th birthday.

Meet this year’s winners – Sharma Taylor (Fiction), Sharanya Deepak (Life Writing), and Yasmine Seale (Poetry) – who will receive £1,000, publication in Wasafiri 105, and mentoring from Nikesh Shukla of The Good Literary Agency. 

‘I have never felt so far from the sea,’ writes Nina Mingya Powles, for our ongoing series, Writing Britain Now. Plus, two poems from her Forward-Prize-nominated collection, Magnolia, 木蘭.