Wasafiri has released the shortlists for the 2026 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize, selecting fifteen writers across fiction, life writing, and poetry. Winners in each category will receive £1,000 and will be announced on Saturday, 31 October, at a ceremony at the Southbank Centre in London, as part of the London Literature Festival.

This year’s judges are Santanu Bhattacharya for fiction, Jen Calleja for life writing, and Mona Kareem for poetry, with Ellah Wakatama serving as chair. The prize is open to writers of any age, gender, nationality, or background. Wakatama likens the judges’ reading to a series of journeys through countries, communities, and homes, adding that the chosen pieces are meant to serve as guides to new places and ways of seeing. Wasafiri Editor and Publishing Director Sana Goyal says the shortlisted writers, together and separately, push past stylistic and formal conventions as well as linguistic and metaphorical borders.

The prize drew a record 1,353 entries from 79 countries, up 26.69 percent on last year. The sharpest rise came from Africa, where the number of entrants grew by about 172 percent. The Middle East and North Africa (54.55 percent), North America (33.33 percent), and Asia (30.91 percent) also saw increases.

The 2026 shortlist is as follows:

Fiction
Iman ādam, “Yellowing”
Con Houghton, “The Canary”
Lavan Jeyarupalingam, “Beach Day”
Kathryn Sharpe, “So, what you sayin’?”
Shamima Yasmine, “Dispatches Investigates”

Life Writing
Khazna Y Chami, “Thinking Positively”
Kate Coffey, “There is a Hotel”
Tarun Gidwani, “Ocean of Milk”
Jacquie Palmer, “Lost Children”
Catherine Xinxin Yu, “Irrational Numbers” (a translation of Yan Shu-xia’s 無理之數)

Poetry
Naro Alonzo, “Disconnection Notice”
Emmanuel Chukwu, “Oral Tradition”
Elia Isaac, “the ground underneath us holds so much it is terrifying”
Nicole W Lee, “宫 / Gong ghazitsu”
Alison Clara Tan, “Cauterise”

Every shortlisted writer and winner will be offered a place on The Literary Consultancy’s Chapter and Verse or Free Reads mentoring scheme, depending on eligibility, plus a year’s subscription to Wasafiri. The shortlisted pieces will appear online in spring 2027, and the winning entries will run in the magazine’s spring 2027 issue. Submissions for the 2027 prize open in February.

Wasafiri, named for the Kiswahili word for “travellers,” has published contemporary literature, art, and research since 1984, with a particular focus on emerging writers from the Global South.