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.  

Inviting Fiction, Life Writing, and Poetry on the following specific themes, for 2025 publication:

• Climate writing and nature writing, particularly from indigenous perspectives
• The labour and material conditions of writing, including tech and AI
• Human rights, censorship, appropriation, and the ‘right to narrate’

Fiction, life writing, and poetry: Closed

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 within a six month period. 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. 

Critical articles and essays: Open

We invite submissions of critical articles and essays, reviews, 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, 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.

Reviews: Open

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

Critical articles and essays	5000 – 8000 words
Fiction, life writing, and interviews	4000 – 6000 words
Book reviews of one title	800 – 1000 words
Book reviews of two titles	1000 – 1200 words
Poems	Maximum of 3 totaling 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)	£200
Poems	£40
Book reviews	£50
Review Essays	£120

Website link: Submissions – Wasafiri Magazine of International Contemporary Literature