New Writer 2026: Shasta Hanif Ali

Shasta is a writer and poet navigating the legacy of race and heritage; where meditations of memory and language interlace and disrupt. Shasta’s writing has been published in Mslexia, Silver Press, New Writing Scotland, Books from Scotland, among others. Her writing has also featured in Edinburgh Museums and Art Galleries. She is a winner of the Edinburgh 900 Poetry Competition 2025 and the 2024 Candlestick Press Light Poems competition.

Shasta has written and performed her poetry at Push The Boat Out Poetry Festival and Edinburgh’s International Book Festival, amongst others. She was also nominated as one of Edinburgh’s 100 trailblazing women.

Writing sample

Weathering 

Out of the blue, you asked me the colour of my grief. I said

it changes, yesterday it was indigo but today, perhaps it’s azure 

I made a perimeter of sea glass—frosted turquoise and cobalts

you got on your hands and knees, tossed them 

back to sea, looked into the hazel of my eyes and said

weathering is both shelter and storm

you mined lapis lazuli from sar-e-sang caves; powdered

my sorrow into pigments and pigments of ultramarine blue

we traded to invaders dressed as travellers, carrying countries 

in their pockets of blue-gold: in exchange for        sea foam dresses

You gathered me, all tumbled sea pottery; willow

of broken pieces and porcelain sharp edges 

& made me a mosaic, Mesopotamia would marvel 

to show me the endless beauty of us

Shasta says:

'I am delighted to receive a New Writers Award and grateful to Scottish Book Trust for this opportunity. It’s come at just the right time for my writing and development. I’m looking forward to meeting the other awardees and being in a community.'