Enter the 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize

The 2025 prize is open until 30 June, 2025. Scroll to the bottom to enter the prize. Follow us on social media or sign up to our newsletter to be the first to hear about the shortlist and winners later in the year.

Exceptionally international in scope, the prize supports writers who have not yet published a book-length work, with no limits on age, gender, nationality, or background. The winners of each category will receive a £1,000 cash prize and publication in Wasafiri magazine. All winners and shortlisted writers will be offered the Chapter and Verse or Free Reads mentoring scheme in partnership with The Literary Consultancy (dependent on eligibility), as well as a one-year print subscription to Wasafiri.

Every writer recognised by the prize, running since 2009, remains part of the Wasafiri community, and is supported by the magazine as their career grows. Past winners and shortlistees of the New Writing Prize include the likes of Akwaeke Emezi, Caleb Femi, and Louise Kennedy, who have gone on to score deals with major international publishing houses such as Penguin, Peepal Tree Press, Bloomsbury, and Hachette, and to be shortlisted for and win prizes including the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Forward Prizes, and the Bocas Poetry Prize, among many others.

Follow us on social media or sign up to our newsletter to be the first to hear about the shortlist and winners later in the year.

Judges

Romesh Gunesekera

Romesh Gunesekera grew up in Sri Lanka and the Phillipines before moving to England in 1971. He is the author of various novels and short stories.

Anton Hur

Anton Hur is a translator and author working in Seoul. He is the author of Toward Eternity (HarperVia) and No One Told Me Not To (Across Books). He was born in Stockholm, Sweden, and raised in British Hong Kong, Ethiopia, and Thailand, but mostly in Korea.

Noreen Masud

Noreen Masud is a Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Bristol, and an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker.

Yasmine Seale

Yasmine Seale is a British-Syrian poet, translator and critic. Her writing has appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review, Times Literary Supplement, Apollo and elsewhere.