Diverse panel of judges submit final scores for the Young Muslim Writers Awards 2015
The judging panel for the Young Muslim Writers Awards 2015 has carefully assessed and scored every single entry in the shortlist. A total of forty outstanding poems and short stories written by children between the ages of 5 and 16 were shortlisted and winners for each category will be announced at a formal ceremony in London on the 5th of December 2015.
The young writers’ submissions have been assessed by a diverse panel of judges including Carnegie Medal winner Tim Bowler and novelist and poet Louis de Bernières who is most popular for his novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.
Feedback from the judges has been excellent and they are very enthusiastic about the awards. Children’s author Neil Arksey comments about the entries “Each of these writers shows terrific promise and talent. They should all be very proud of their achievement in being selected for the award.”
Other judges on the panel are Ahmed Masoud, Andrew Cowan, Anne Cassidy, Brian Keaney, Caryl Hart, Fawzia Gilani Williams, Gillian Clarke, Helen Walsh, Hifzha Shaheen, Karen Lynn Williams, Laila Ibrahim, Leila Aboulela, Nick Barlay, Pinky Lilani, Robert Crawford, Roopa Farooki, Rukhsana Khan, Selma Dabbagh, Shahida Rahman, Shelina Janmohamed, Shemiza Rashid, Simon Brett, Sufiya Ahmed, Sumayya Lee, Susan Bassnett, Tommy A-Man Evans, Umm Jawayriah, Umm Zakiyyah, Wendy Cope and Yahiya Emerick.
The Young Muslim Writers Awards was set up as a standalone competition for 5 – 16 year olds in 2010, following its success as part of Muslim Hands’ Muslim Writers Awards. Since then, it has encouraged and nurtured the writing talents of thousands of children through creative writing workshops and the annual competition.
For the third consecutive year, the ceremony is presented in association with the Yusuf Islam Foundation, an umbrella organisation which has over thirty years of experience operating in education, community development and philanthropy. The ceremony will be broadcast on Islam Channel, the official media partner of the competition since 2006.
Meet the Judges
Ahmed Masoud is a writer and director who grew up in Palestine and lives in the UK. His theatre credits include Go to Gaza, Drink the Sea (London and Edinburgh 2009), Escape from Gaza (BBC Radio 4, 2011), Walaa, Loyalty (London 2014, funded by Arts Council England) and The Shroud Maker (London 2015). Ahmed is the founder of Al Zaytouna Dance Theatre where he wrote and directed several productions which have toured Europe. After finishing his PhD research, Ahmed published many journals and articles including a chapter in Britain and the Muslim World: A Historical Perspective (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011). His debut novel, Vanished – The Mysterious Disappearance of Mustafa Ouda was released in 2015.
Andrew Cowan was born in Corby, Northamptonshire, and educated at Beanfield Comprehensive and the University of East Anglia (UEA). He was the first person in his family to attend university. Now he is a Professor of Creative Writing and the Director of the Creative Writing course at UEA. He has published five novels, including the multi-award-winning Pig, and a guidebook on creative writing called The Art of Writing Fiction. His sixth novel is almost finished.
Anne Cassidy lived in London for most of her life. In 1989 she started writing books for teenagers. Her first book was published in 1991 and since then she has published over forty books, thirty of which have been teenage fiction. She writes dark crime fiction and is best known for her book Looking for JJ which was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal. The sequel to this book is called Finding Jennifer Jones. Her new novel, Moth Girls, will be published by Hot Key in January 2016.
Brian Keaney is an award-winning author of twenty novels for young people which have been translated into nineteen languages. He has also written more than thirty educational books and worked as a journalist and TV script-writer. He has taught writing at Goldsmiths College, the London College of Fashion and the University of Cambridge. He was born and grew up in East London. His parents were Irish immigrants and he has a large extended family in the UK and in Ireland.
Caryl Hart is a full-time children’s writer and the author of over twenty picture books and young fiction. She loves to write rhyming stories, which she credits to enjoying poetry when she was growing up. Caryl’s first picture book, Don’t Dip Your Chips in Your Drink, Kate! won two regional awards. She delivers creative literacy workshops in schools and libraries. Caryl lives on a windy hill in Derbyshire with her family, her dog and two cats. She loves taking long walks, visiting cafes, baking and organising community projects.
Dr. Fawzia Gilani-Williams is a writer and the International Positive Education Network Global Representative for Abu Dhabi (UAE). She has taught at the Abu Dhabi Education Council and studied ‘Children’s Literature and Character Education: Children’s Islamic Literature in Britain, USA and Canada since 1990’ at the University of Worcester, UK. As an internationally experienced educator, researcher and writer of children’s literature, she promotes creativity, positive visibility and literature-based character development. She is the author of the Islamic Fairy Tales series and has been writing children’s literature since 2002.
Gillian Clarke was born in Cardiff and lives in Ceredigion. She has been the National Poet for Wales since 2008 and was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in December 2010 and the Wilfred Owen Award in 2012. Recent books include a writer’s journal, At the Source, and The Christmas Wren, a children’s story for grown-ups. Her latest collection, Ice, was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Award 2012. She has written for radio, and translated poetry and prose from Welsh. The Gathering/Yr Helfa, written for the National Theatre of Wales, was performed at Hafod y Llan Farm in Snowdonia in September, 2014. She is currently working on Zoology, a collection of poems.
Helen Walsh is the author of four award-winning novels, all published by Canongate. Her novel, Once Upon a Time in England was the recipient of the Somerset Maugham Prize. She has recently written and directed her first film, The Violators, due for release in 2016. She lives in Merseyside with her husband and son.
Hifzha Shaheen is the Senior Journalist at The Asian Today. Having recently joined the Mosaic Network as a Mentor, she is an enthusiast of inspiring young people through positive thinking. Hifzha is passionate about grassroots community work and is a Board Member for Asian Women MEAN Business, an organisation which helps women to accomplish their entrepreneurial dreams by inspiring, championing and connecting like-minded women.
Karen Lynn Williams was born in New Haven Connecticut. She has written fourteen books for children including Galimoto, a Reading Rainbow featured book and a number of other stories and articles. Her poetry has been published in newspapers and two chapbooks. She has a Master’s degree in deaf education and she teaches creative writing in the Masters of Fine Arts programs at Chatham University and Seton Hill University. Karen has lived in Haiti and Malawi with her husband and four children. Her travels abroad have been the inspiration for much of her writing. She currently lives and writes in Chinle, Arizona on the Navajo reservation with her husband and her rescue dog Reena.
Laila Ibrahim spent much of her career as a pre-school director, and that, coupled with her experiences as a teacher and her education in developmental psychology and attachment theory, provided ample fodder for the story of Mattie and Lisbeth in Yellow Crocus. After getting a Master’s degree in Human Development, she realised she wanted to do more work with children and opened her own pre-school. She is currently working on her next novel.
Leila Aboulela won the first Caine Prize for African Writing. Her novels, The Translator, described by The Muslim News as “the first halal novel written in English”, Minaret, and Lyrics Alley were all long-listed for the Orange Prize. Lyrics Alley was Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize. Leila’s work has been translated into 14 languages and adapted extensively by BBC Radio who also broadcast a number of her plays including The Mystic Life. Leila Aboulela’s new novel The Kindness of Enemies is inspired by the life of Imam Shamil. She grew up in Khartoum and now lives in Aberdeen.
Louis de Bernières is the best-selling author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best Book in 1994. His first novel, The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts, was published in 1990 and won the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize Best First Book Eurasia Region in 1991. Louis was selected by Granta magazine as one of the twenty ‘Best of Young British Novelists’ in 1993. His most recent books are The Dust That Falls From Dreams, Birds Without Wings and A Partisan’s Daughter, a collection of stories, Notwithstanding, and a collection of poetry, Imagining Alexandria.
Neil Arksey is an actor, author and screenwriter who started with writing short stories. Most of his novels for children and young adults are published by Penguin Random House. He was one of the creators of Little Robots, the highly successful pre-school animated CBeebies show. As a story editor, head writer and producer, Neil has been responsible for over a thousand episodes of TV drama in the UK and abroad. More recently he has been writing feature films and an adult crime novel.
Nick Barlay is the author of three acclaimed novels;, Curvy Lovebox, Crumple Zone and Hooky Gear, which mapped out the underbelly of contemporary London. He was mentioned in Granta’s ‘Best of Young British Novelists’ in 2003, and his fourth novel, The Wife of a Man Who, was widely praised. He has written award-winning radio plays, contributed to short story anthologies, and his journalism has appeared in many publications. Nick was born in London to Hungarian Jewish refugee parents. His most recent book is Scattered Ghosts, exploring the history of his family over the last two hundred years, which was longlisted for the 2015 Wingate Prize. He has also written short stories, radio plays and a wide range of articles. He regularly gives lessons on fiction, journalism and family history.
Pinky Lilani CBE DL is an author, motivational speaker, food guru and internationally acclaimed champion for women. She is the force behind the annual Women of the Future Awards, the Asian Women of Achievement Awards, The Ambassadors programme, The Inspirational Women’s Network and the Women of the Future summit. She is an associate fellow of the Said Business School, Oxford and a Patron of DIL, the Westminster Society and Frank Water. She is an Ambassador for The Tiffany Circle of the British Red Cross and Girl Guiding UK. Pinky is a member of the board of Global Diversity Practice and on the Court of Brunel University. She is the winner of several awards and she is listed as one of the 100 most powerful women in the UK by BBC Radio 4 Women’s Hour as well as being named by GQ magazine as one of the 100 most powerful women networkers in the UK.
Robert Crawford has published seven collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Testament (Cape, 2014). His other books include the biography of T. S. Eliot, Young Eliot (Cape, 2015). Born in Lanarkshire in 1959, Robert was the founder of the international magazine Verse in 1984 and worked as poetry editor for the Edinburgh publisher Polygon in the 1990’s. He is also the co-editor of The Penguin Book of Poetry from Britain and Ireland since 1945. He publishes poetry and works of criticism in the London Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement. Robert is Professor of Modern Scottish Literature and Bishop Wardlaw Professor of Poetry in the School of English at the University of St Andrews where, among other things, he teaches creative writing.
Roopa Farooki was born in Pakistan and brought up in London. She studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at New College, Oxford, and turned to writing after careers in corporate finance and advertising. She has published six novels to critical acclaim and has been listed three times for the Orange Prize. She has been longlisted for the Impact Dublin literary award DSC prize for South Asian literature. In 2013 she was awarded the John C. Laurence prize from the Authors’ Foundation, for writing which improves understanding between races and she was given an Arts Council Literature award. Roopa’s novels are published in the US and they have been translated into thirteen languages. Roopa teaches creative writing on the Masters programme at the University of Oxford.
Rukhsana Khan is an award-winning author and storyteller who was born in Pakistan and immigrated to Canada at the age of three. She was bullied as a child and turned to books to cope. She has had twelve books published. Her 2010 children’s story Big Red Lollipop was chosen by The New York Public Library as one of the 100 greatest children’s books in the last 100 years. Some of her books have been published internationally. She’s appeared on television and radio numerous times and has been featured at conferences and festivals around the world. She lives in Toronto with her husband and family.
Selma Dabbagh is a British-Palestinian writer of fiction and the winner of the Fish International Short Story Prize (Ireland), The David TK Wong Award (International PEN), The Raymond Carver Award (US) and the Reader Competition (Germany). Her debut novel, Out of It, was published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing and then by Bloomsbury UK and US. Set in Gaza, London and the Gulf, the novel was nominated as a Guardian Book of The Year by Ahdaf Soueif in 2011 and by Marina Warner in 2012. Selma’s first play, The Brick, was produced by the BBC in January 2014 and was nominated for an Imison Award. Selma is currently working on her second novel. She also works as a lawyer part-time and is the mother of two children.
Shahida Rahman is an award-winning author, writer and publisher. She was born and raised in Cambridge. Her highly acclaimed historical novel, Lascar was published in 2012. Lascar was shortlisted for the Muslim Writers Awards’ Unpublished Novel Award in 2008. Other works include The Integration of the Hijab into Police Uniforms (Behind the Hijab Anthology, 2009) and The Lascar (radio play, 2009).
Shahida has contributed articles on a range of social issues to numerous publications, including Best of British, The Great War, Sisters magazine, Huffington Post and Asian World. Shahida won a British Muslim Award for ‘Arts and Cultural Awareness’ in January 2015. She is currently writing her second novel.
Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is the author of the bestselling memoir Love in a Headscarf, which has been translated into nine languages. She started her writing career by blogging at her website Spirit21 alongside working in the marketing and communications industries. She is currently the Vice President of Ogilvy Noor, the world’s first bespoke Islamic branding agency for building brands with Muslim consumers. Shelina has been named one of the 500 most influential Muslims in the world, and one of the UK’s 100 most influential Muslim women. The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising awarded her ‘Woman of Tomorrow’, one of ten future female leaders of the British advertising industry. Her next book, Generation M is due to be published in early 2016.
Shemiza Rashid is a multi-award winning interfaith art practitioner, producer, broadcaster, sixth form teacher, media consultant and mother of six. She is the founder of the children’s performing arts clubs Creative Muslim Network and Shining Ummah. Shemiza is a growing voice across the community and regional radio, where she presents the dynamic Urban Kube show on InspireFM and regularly features as and guest panellist on BBC Asian Network and BBC Three Counties Radio. Shemiza has also produced the celebrity cooking show For the Love of Food on Islam Channel. She was presented the Asian Women of Achievement Award for Public Service in 2014 and she was shortlisted for Best Female Muslim Radio Presenter and Most Innovative Radio show at the Momo Awards.
Simon Brett is the author of more than ninety-five books including the Charles Paris, Mrs Pargeter, Fethering and Blotto & Twinks series. In 2014 he was awarded the prestigious Crime Writers’ Association Diamond Dagger for excellence. His stand-alone thriller, A Shock to the System, was made into a feature film starring Michael Caine in 1990. Simon has also written extensively for theatre, radio and television, where his best-known work was the comedy series After Henry, which starred Prunella Scales.
Sufiya Ahmed is the author of Secrets of the Henna Girl (Puffin Books) and was the recipient of the 2012 Brit Writers Awards’ Published Writer of the Year prize and Best Teenage Book at the Redbridge Children’s Book Award 2013. The novel has been shortlisted for the North East Teen Book Award and Rotherham Children’s Book Award, highly commended at the Sheffield Children’s Book Award and translated into Arabic, Spanish and Polish.
She is the founder/director of the BIBI Foundation, a non-profit organisation which encourages the involvement of under-privileged children in the democratic process through visits to the Houses of Parliament.
The fourth book in her Zahra series, Zahra’s Second Year at the Khadija Academy, was released in October 2013.
Sumayya Lee was born in South Africa during the Apartheid Era. Her debut, The Story of Maha was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Best First Book – Africa) and she has since published the sequel: Maha, Ever After. In 2014 and 2015 she served as a mentor for Writivism – a pan African literary event that is the brainchild of the Centre for African Cultural Excellence in Uganda – and edited the anthology of Longlisted writers, Fire in the Night and Other Stories. Sumayya has co-edited the 2015 anthology, Roses for Betty and Other Stories with Emmanuel Sigauke, and has written for O Magazine, and Woman&Home (SA). She also has a website where she blogs occasionally.
Susan Bassnett is a writer and scholar of comparative literature and translation studies. She served as Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Warwick for ten years and taught in its Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies, which she founded in the 1980s. She sits on the board of several international funding bodies, including the Leverhulme Trust. Susan is the author of over twenty books. Translation Studies, which first appeared in 1980, has remained in print since and has become an important international textbook in its field. Her book, Comparative Literature (1993) has become internationally renowned and has been translated into several languages. Other books include works on Latin American literature, women’s theatre history and poetry. Recent books include Translation in Global News (2008) written with Esperanca Bielsa, Reflections on Translation (2011) and Translation (2013) in the Routledge New Critical Idiom series. In addition to her scholarly works, Bassnett is a well-known journalist and also writes poetry. She is an elected Fellow of the Institute of Linguists and also of the Royal Society of Literature.
Tim Bowler has written over twenty books for teenagers and won fifteen awards, including the prestigious Carnegie Medal for River Boy. He has been described by the Sunday Telegraph as ‘the master of the psychological thriller’ and by the Independent as ‘one of the truly individual voices in British teenage fiction’. His works include Midget, Shadows, Storm Catchers, Starseeker, Apocalypse, Frozen Fire, Bloodchild, Buried Thunder, Sea of Whispers and the Blade series which has been hailed as a ground-breaking work of fiction. His most recent novels are Night Runner and Game Changer. His books have been translated into over thirty languages and have sold over a million copies worldwide.
Tommy “A-Man” Evans is a poet, presenter, producer, performer, pedagogist and postgraduate researcher. In his decade long career as a musician he appeared on over forty releases, managed a record label, collaborated with multi-platinum and underground artists alike and performed in the UK, USA and Europe. Presently, he produces and presents RTV’s Beard Is Beautiful, delivers motivational talks and dynamic spoken-word performances as his artistic alter-ego A-Man. He celebrates the social, cultural and aesthetic interplay of Black and European culture as a writer for afropean.com. Tommy acts, designs, writes screenplays, edits, directs and is developing his doctoral thesis exploring the educational arena in which migration, minorities and markets intersect.
Umm Juwayriyah, a pen name for Maryam A. Sullivan, is an award winning poet, playwright, and author of The Size of a Mustard Seed. A married mother of three, she is dedicated to increasing indigenous African-American Muslim narratives in the literary world. Outside of the writing world, Umm Juwayriyah is a teacher, business owner and is the co-founder of MuslimGirlsRead, an inner-city reading initiative. She holds a Bachelor’s degree with honours from Bay Path University and a Master’s degree with honours from Regis University.
Umm Zakiyyah is the internationally acclaimed author of the If I Should Speak trilogy, the novels Muslim Girl and Hearts We Lost. Daughter of American converts to Islam, she writes about interfaith relations and the intercultural, spiritual, and moral struggles of Muslims in America and abroad. Umm Zakiyyah’s work has earned praise from writers, professors, and filmmakers and has been translated into multiple languages. In 2008, Umm Zakiyyah was awarded the Muslim Girls Unity Conference Distinguished Authors Award. She also writes under her birth name Ruby Moore. In January 2016 her latest novel His Other Wife is scheduled for release worldwide.
Wendy Cope was a London primary school teacher for fifteen years. While encouraging her pupils to write poems she decided to try it for herself. After the publication of her first book Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis in 1986 she became a freelance writer. Her subsequent collections include Serious Concerns, If I Don’t Know which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award, and Family Values. She has also written three poetry collections for children aged 7 and under and a prose book (would be better to refer to this as the type of prose book as the term sounds odd), Life, Love and The Archers, in 2014. She has edited several poetry anthologies including The Funny Side: 101 Humorous Poems, Is That the New Moon? and Big Orchard Book of Funny Poems. In 2010 she was awarded an OBE for services to literature.
Yahiya Emerick has extensive experience in the field of education and curriculum writing. He has authored over forty books on Islam, Muslim culture, history and youth fiction and his articles have been published by local, national and international press. In 1992, Yahiya founded Amirah Publishing to produce American-oriented literature on Islam.