| home | issues | about | shop | submissions |
Eloise Birtwhistle:
Hello Esraa, great to see you. Thank you for agreeing to this conversation and to being part of the next issue of Wet Grain. Do you want to introduce yourself?
Esraa Husain:
My name is Esraa Husain, I use any and all pronouns, and I’m a creative writer, community organiser and a researcher. I write in both Arabic and English, fiction and non-fiction. I started in 2013 and, most recently, one of my pieces was accepted in SINK, which is a literary magazine for migrant writing.
EB:
That’s exciting, I look forward to reading! What do you have in SINK?
EH:
In SINK it will be non-fiction creative text. I like the way they work with the writers, so you have agency and a lot of flexibility over what you want to be published. When I first started publishing pieces I didn’t know how much agency a writer has so I would just follow the editor blindly. Growing up throughout the years and moving through the publishing industry, I feel like I developed my negotiation skills and became more confident at having my voice heard.
EB:
Yes, as you’ve grown into your own voice, you’ve also grown into a different kind of relationship with editing and with other people’s voices?
EH:
Absolutely. So in the initial years from 2013, I was still an undergrad doing a degree in English, and I think I was still getting more confident with English as a written language. And I didn’t think that people would read it, or that I would have to perform it or share it. I was just writing basically for myself. I started really strongly in the initial years with short stories. But my voice changed and throughout my twenties and now in my early thirties, I feel non-fiction is the genre that speaks to me. And I feel I’m gravitated towards writing as a testimony; witnessing.
EB:
It’s interesting that you’ve moved into non-fiction for this position of witness and testimony. Do you think that non-fiction can do that in a different way from fiction?
EH:
At the end of the day, it’s just a personal choice. The fiction writing gave me opportunities to express myself initially. I feel like I was hiding behind imaginative scenes and characters. Of course, fiction as well can be very symbolic, you can refer to your personal life in indirect ways. But I feel like my experience of immigration, of movement, has impacted my writing. And now it’s the time to just say what I want to say authentically. I’m also guided by the readings of African American writers, by the readings of my PhD, Black Scottish authors as well, immersing myself in their practice.
EB:
Maybe you could briefly say what your PhD is?
EH:
The PhD research is on contemporary Black Scottish writing. Exploring themes of displacement, migrancy, agency, kinship. I would like to mention here some of the writers – the chosen authors in the research: Maud Sulter, Zoë Wicomb, Aminatta Forna, Jackie Kay, Kokumo Rocks, Lisa Williams and Amanda Thomson. And I’m also looking forward to including the work of younger authors like Titi [Titilayo Farukuoye] as well. They’re also close friends, so I’m really glad, it’s such a wholesome experience writing about your friends and the people that you work with.
EB:
I think that brings us nicely onto thinking about writing and community. You’ve spoken about this beautiful thing, getting to incorporate your peers, your community, into your research. Really looking at it as a living activity, an ongoing and thriving space. And, of course, you also run UBelong, which I would love you to tell us a little bit about.
EH:
Just hearing how you said that, it immediately came into my mind: it’s like a living archive. All these gaps and underrepresentations that you see in the literary scene and in institutions like publishing, the University, creative scenes as well. And you want to include your own voice and voices of your community. It’s like you’re developing an archive. It’s a living and present archive.
UBelong Glasgow is a multilingual community platform that features underrepresented creatives, including Black and People of Colour, people from the LGBTIQ+ communities, and people who have disabilities. It started in 2020 – the year of experiencing lockdown – and it was one way of finding that human connection and also turning towards the community for support. And everyone was absolutely generous. I mean, I could not have done it without all the support that I got from all the other community organisers.
EB:
Listen Gallery has clearly been a really great collaborator for you, Glasgow Zine Library as well. I know these are two spaces that add so much value to Glasgow. Do you find Glasgow is a good city to be doing this kind of work?
EH:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Honestly, I’m so biased. It’s my favourite city in Scotland. And I moved around, so I lived a little bit in Aberdeen, I lived a little bit in Edinburgh, and I moved around in the UK. Glasgow is really where I feel a sense of belonging and a sense of community. Hence why it’s called UBelong Glasgow! Absolutely, I feel it’s a perfect fit.
Glasgow also has its own ups and downs. But with everything that Glasgow has to offer – the good and the bad and the inbetween – I think it’s a city that has a history that’s very significant, it’s a city of richness as well. I feel like we can make it better. We can organise better, we can come together.
Riah also started Listen Gallery around the same time, it was in 2020 with the lockdown. Officially, we started our collaboration in February in 2025. The first event was highlighting local queer creative writers. It was an evening of spoken word and poetry, highlighting a mixture of emerging artists and artists who are more established. And it was successful, people loved it. It was fully booked, we had to turn people away.
As far as I know Listen Gallery is the only gallery in Scotland that is run by a queer woman of colour, which is amazing. It’s really unfortunate that they didn’t get the funding from Creative Scotland and that’s what led them to moving out, a period of time that was very uncertain. But, sometimes things don’t go your way, and the next thing coming is even better.
EB:
Something I really like about the way you programme things is that combination of emerging writers alongside writers who are more established. Can you speak about why you made that choice and what you think it brings to the events that you run.
EH:
A lot of people have questions: what’s the qualification, how do you evaluate, how do you choose people, who gets to come here? ‘I’ve said it before and I will say it again. Whether you started your creativity ten years ago or last night, it will always be good enough here and we would love to have you with us. All kinds of creativity at UBelong are deemed to be valid and valued and they will be featured.’*
I would talk to people about using Zoom, how to do invoices, sharing a little bit about what their rights are, what they’re entitled to. To empower them and also to educate them. Because I didn’t understand all of that myself when I was dipping my toes into the scene. There’s a lot of hesitation, a lot of self doubt, especially with creatives and artists, and I feel like UBelong is a platform that is challenging that. Come in any way you can and join us in any capacity you can afford.
EB:
These practical things that you’ve done to support people make me think about the Edward Morgan Poetry Award, which you were a judge on last year. A few years ago, the Edwin Morgan Trust made a lot of changes to the way that they run the award. Could you speak a little bit about what you think of organisations making these shifts?
EH:
It was a really interesting experience. I never really saw myself as a judge, or to be the one judging or deciding who’s worthy of winning, or who’s worthy of publication. I feel like with Ubelong, it was definitely a more flexible and open approach: everyone who would approach it, would have a slot. If the slots for this month are full, then I will put their name down for the next month. So it was always a collaborative work that didn’t have hierarchy.
So when I was first approached to be a judge, I was a bit hesitant. I liked that in the actual contract it says ‘reviewer/judge’ – reviewer sounds more like me! But it’s definitely something that I was uncomfortable with, it was new and unfamiliar. It’s a space that I think also gives me more power, and I’m always uncomfortable with that element of control and deciding.
It was playful. It was interesting. It was at times a bit hard because of course they brought a team of reviewers and each one of us is so different from the other. Which is something I love! I love differences, I love the richness in variety. But it was also hard sometimes, a bit challenging and tricky to see eye-to-eye and agree on certain things. I feel like my approach was a little bit welcoming to experimental stuff and welcoming to things that maybe are deemed ‘not yet ready’. But I realised that the way they work is that the submission has to be ready. And fair enough for all the other contributors who also submitted their work. I think I would definitely love to amplify and support people, but I feel that doing it in a grassroots, DIY way is more in alignment to my practice. It was an experience and I’m very grateful for it.
EB:
Do you think that there is more that organisations can learn from grassroots and community initiatives?
EH:
It’s a work in progress. There’s always learning and unlearning to do. And I think as an organisation EMT was great in the way they approached me and the way we talked about it. They were very welcoming, very accommodating and very helpful.
I think seeing things from completely different world views was a challenge. I remember a piece where, the language, you could describe it as vulgar. I know that this is not what we’re supposed to publish. But I felt warmth towards that piece. There were a lot of raw emotions, a lot of anger and frustration towards institutions, towards these bodies of power. Yes, you can be vulgar towards that. Because what is decorum really for in this instance? And through the discussions with other judges, I sensed that a lot of us were just uncomforta- ble with it. Each one of us evaluated and measured the submissions in completely different ways.
EB:
I think your experience highlights the importance of what EMT is doing, to have a wide range of perspectives involved in decision making processes. A piece
EH:
That’s a really great way of putting it. Don’t get me wrong, we did speak about all these things and how subjective it is. But I keep thinking about that piece. Some of these submissions still haunt me. I really tried to advocate for them, but every person is advocating in their own way. Definitely the winners, absolutely all of them deserved it. If anything, I hope there is more money and more funding and we can bring more winners in the future.
Also something worth mentioning: I recognised one of the submissions, I know they read their poetry at UBelong. So I was like: ‘I know this person, so maybe it’s not fair for me to judge it’. And because I know that person, I know their background, I know their immigration issues. I’m just thinking of all these intersections of a writer that I know comes from a refugee background, I know they’re struggling with work at that time. It makes me think about the authors, the writers, the emerging artists who want to win but their circumstances limit their capacity to do so.
EB:
I suppose there’s lots of things that organisations can do to help encourage people or to make things more accessible. But we still live in a world that’s full of these structures that limit people’s capacity. An organisation can’t change that on its own, there’s a wider world that we’re working within.
EH:
And we have to acknowledge that.
EB:
A lot of what we’ve been talking about – perspective and experience and what moves us – is also to do with identity. I wanted to ask you what you think about how publishers market identity.
EH:
Two weeks ago, Dr Christina Neuwirth did an independent study of the publishing and writing scene in Scotland.** I know in the mainstream media there’s a lot of talk about tokenism and identity politics, but we look at statistics and studies and it’s not actually changing that much. Scotland-based publishers published male authors 50% more than female authors in 2017 –2019. And the more repeated visibility authors received through festi- vals, prizes, reviewing and publication, the more Black authors and authors of colour were excluded. Which is the opposite of what people think is happening! And what we hope is happening.
EB:
Do you think that there could be a better bridge for people to move from spaces like UBelong into the opportunities at literary festivals, the opportunities to be published by the bigger publishing houses. How do you think we make that pathway better?
EH:
What immediately comes into my mind is policies. So, building that foundation of a safe and welcoming space. And then maybe through that people feel more comfortable and confident.
I know people through UBelong that performed for the first time and they share these things with me: that UBelong was my first time sharing my poetry and now I have published pieces and now I’m contributing to this festival and that festival, I met this group and I collaborated with that person. And there is that sense of growth and development that they gained from participating and being included. It happens with other platforms too.
We need to ensure that once we as authors and writers and creatives get out of these grassroots and community spaces, that bigger spaces are also safe in the same way. I know that is harder to manage, but – I said this maybe ten times in this interview – it’s a work in progress. I believe that we’re not done yet. We’re working through it. This is a process.