2026 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize: Open for Entries
Since 2009, when it was inaugurated by our Founding Editor Dr. Susheila Nasta, the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize has been awarded to some of the most thrilling new voices in life writing, poetry, and fiction from around the world. The prize now also welcomes entries in translation across all three categories. We are delighted to announce that the 2026 edition of the Prize is now open for entries until 11.59pm BST on 30 June 2026.
Representing more of the globe than any other prize of its kind, the prize supports writers who have not published book-length works, with no limits on age, gender, nationality, or background. The winners of each category will receive a £1,000 cash prize and print publication in Wasafiri; if a work in translation wins, the cash prize will be split equally between the author and translator.
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.
Past winners and shortlistees include the likes of Akwaeke Emezi, Caleb Femi, Louise Kennedy, and Momtaza Mehri, among other notable names — writers who have gone on to score deals with major international publishing houses such as Penguin, Bloomsbury, and Hachette, and be shortlisted for and win prizes including the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Forward Prizes, and the Bocas Poetry Prize.
This year's multi-award-winning judges are Ellah Wakatama (Chair), Santanu Bhattacharya (Fiction), Jen Calleja (Life Writing), and Mona Kareem (Poetry).
Ellah Wakatama, our esteemed Chair, says: ‘Judging a prize is always a journey, or several journeys, into the unknown. I am excited to find out what writers around the world are asking, telling, showing. At a time when so much of our world is in crisis, I’m looking for stories of hope, resistance, love, and joy. I’m curious about the innovations we may find — how do writers shape a piece to hold the weight of the story they need to tell? Above all, I am looking for writing that is fearless, bold, innovative, and beautiful — stories that will take me into other people’s lives and realities.’
Fiction judge Santanu Bhattacharya is ‘looking forward to reading stories that enlighten, engage, and entertain in ways we don’t see often in fiction.’ He adds: ‘Over the years, this prize has provided a much-needed platform for emerging writers to showcase their talent.’
Meanwhile, Life Writing judge Jen Calleja shares that she ‘appreciate[s] life writing that tells us what the writer has made of the (incredible or unspectacular) experiences they've had through choices of form, voice, and/or style’. She further adds: ‘I hope that it manages to some extent have us feel present and side-by-side with the writer as these events or epiphanies are unfolding rather than following in the writer's wake as they retell their memories and wisdom over their shoulder. Memoir for me isn’t a diary or a reporting of “facts” for posterity, it's a letter to oneself and the reader simultaneously.’
For the Poetry category, judge Mona Kareem is looking for ‘poems that criss-cross the personal and the political, betraying formalism and contaminating English. Poems that distil, name, emerge, roar, and agitate.’
Read the Terms & Conditions and Enter the 2026 Prize here.
About the judges
Ellah P Wakatama, OBE, (Hon) FRSL has over 25 years of experience as a publisher, including five years as Deputy Editor of an international literary journal. Wakatama is Editor-at-Large at Canongate Books and chair of the Caine Prize for African Writing. She serves on the General Committee of the Royal Literary Fund, where she chairs the Writers’ Mosaic subcommittee. She is former deputy editor of Granta magazine, former editor-at-large for Granta Books, and has also worked as Senior Editor at Jonathan Cape, Random House, and Assistant Editor at Penguin. In 2011 she was awarded an OBE for services to the publishing industry and in 2016 was named one of New African Magazine’s ‘100 Most Influential Africans’.
Santanu Bhattacharya is the author of two novels, One Small Voice and Deviants, and several works of short fiction. One Small Voice was an Observer Best Debut Novel for 2023, and was shortlisted for the Author’s Club Best First Novel Award and the Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize. Deviants won the Rainbow Award and BLF-Atta Galata Prize for Fiction Book of the Year and has been longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize. Santanu is the recipient of the Desmond Elliott Prize Residency, the Mo Siewcharran Prize, the Life Writing Prize, and a London Writers’ Award. He grew up in India and now lives in London.
Jen Calleja's most recent books include the experimental memoirs Fair: The Life-Art of Translation (a Guardian Book of the Day, July 2025) and Goblinhood: Goblin as a Mode (5-star review, The Telegraph). Her short stories, creative non-fiction, and poetry have appeared in Best British Short Stories (Salt), The London Magazine, The White Review, Wasafiri, Ambit, and elsewhere, and she has been shortlisted for the Short Fiction/University of Essex Prize and longlisted for the Ivan Juritz Prize for Experiment in Text. She has translated over twenty works of German-language literature into English and was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2019 for her translation of Marion Poschmann's The Pine Islands. She is also co-publisher at Praspar Press, which publishes Maltese literature in English and English translation. She teaches creative writing at Goldsmiths and for the Granta Writers' Workshop.
Mona Kareem is the author of four poetry collections. Her work has been translated into nine languages, including in Sara El-Kamel's I Will Not Fold These Maps (Poetry Translation Center, London 2023). She is the translator of Octavia Butler’s Kindred, Ra’ad Abdul Qadir’s Except for this Unseen Thread, and Ashraf Fayadh’s Instructions Within. She teaches Arabic literature at Washington University in St Louis.
Photo credits: Santanu Bhattacharya © Behrin Ismailov; Jen Calleja © Jorge Antony Stride
