Susheila Nasta


Susheila Nasta, MBE, Hon. FRSL, is a British critic, editor, academic and literary activist. She is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literatures at Queen Mary University of London, and founding editor of Wasafiri, the UK's leading magazine for international contemporary writing. She is a recipient of the Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature.

Biography

Susheila Nasta was born in the UK. She grew up in India, Germany and Holland, before returning to Britain to complete her education. She undertook undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Kent, and the University of London.
Her commitment to diversifying the literature curriculum and expanding the remit of English studies has been demonstrated throughout the decades since her involvement with the Association for the Teaching of African and Caribbean Literature, which led to the founding in 1984 of the journal Wasafiri, with Nasta as editor-in-chief.
She started her career in school teaching before moving into Higher Education in the 1980s. She has held posts in different departments at several universities, including at the University of Cambridge, the University of North London, the University of Portsmouth, the Open University, where she held a Chair in Modern Literature and is now Professor Emeritus, and at Queen Mary University of London, where she taught between 1992 and 2000, before rejoining in 2017 as Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literatures. Nasta has initiated and led numerous research projects, and since 2007 has led a major public-engagement project on Asian Britain. She co-edited The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing, published in 2020, acknowledged as the first such academic collection to cover some 300 years of Black and Asian British literature.
Nasta is a regular speaker at international conferences, festivals other literary events – notable recent appearances include "An Island Full of Voices: Writing Britain Now" at the British Library, participation in the NGC Bocas Lit Fest in Trinidad, symposia and panel discussions at Goldsmiths, University of London, and presentations at the Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters in Trivandrum, Kerala – and she has served as a judge for literary prizes including the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the SI Leeds Literary Prize, and the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize. She has also curated and advised on such exhibitions as At the Heart of the Nation: Indians in Britain, and 2018's Windrush: Songs in a Strange Land for the British Library.
She has published widely on post-colonial and contemporary writing, particularly on literature from the Caribbean, the South Asian diaspora and black Britain. She has especial expertise in the work of Samuel Selvon, Jean Rhys, Jamaica Kincaid, as well as on women's writing from Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia. Nasta's 2019 publication, the anthology Brave New Words: The Power of Writing Now, celebrating 35 years of Wasafiri under her editorship, contains contributions by writers who include Bernardine Evaristo, Romesh Gunesekera, James Kelman, Kei Miller, Blake Morrison, Caryl Phillips, Olumide Popoola, Bina Shah, and Mukoma Wa Ngugi, among others.

Awards and honours

In 2011 Nasta was appointed an MBE in the New Year Honours for her services to Black and Asian Literature. In 2019 she was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded the RSL's Benson Medal for exceptional contribution to literature, presented by Marina Warner. In 2020 she became an Honorary Fellow of The English Association.

Selected bibliography

;As editor