MEET THE JUDGES

AHMED JAFFERALI VERSI is the publisher and editor of The Muslim News. Ahmed has interviewed world leaders including the late President of Bosnia Herzegovina, Alija Izetbegovic, the late Aslan Maskhadov of Chechnya, Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom, the Rt. Hon. Tony Blair, the Rt. Hon. David Cameron the Rt. Hon. Theresa May, and the Rt. Hon. Boris Johnson, and HRH The Prince of Wales. During the first Gulf War, Ahmed was part of a British Muslim delegation to Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia mediating for the release of British hostages. In March 2000 Ahmed launched The Muslim News Awards for Excellence celebrating Muslim achievements. He established the Muslim Women’s Sport Foundation and was until recently Deputy President of the International Islamic Women’s Games. A regular speaker at international conferences covering Islamic issues at the local and global level, Ahmed focuses on media representation. Ahmed was awarded Honorary Doctorate of Arts in recognition of achievements as Editor of The Muslim News from the University of Bedfordshire in 2007. He was ranked among the top 20 most powerful Asians in the British media by The Guardian.

A. M. DASSU is an award winning writer of both non-fiction and fiction including the internationally acclaimed novel Boy, Everywhere which is one of The Guardian’s, Bookriot’s, BookTrust’s, and CLPE’s Best Children’s Books of 2020 and has been given a coveted star review from Kirkus, Booklist, and Publisher’s Weekly in the US. She is Deputy Editor of SCBWI-BI’s magazine, Words & Pictures, and a Director of Inclusive Minds, an organisation which champions inclusion, diversity, equality, and accessibility in children’s literature. She is also patron of The Other Side of Hope, a print and online literary magazine, edited by immigrants and refugees which serves to celebrate the refugee and immigrant communities. She is one of The National Literacy Trust’s Connecting Stories campaign authors which aims to help inspire a love of reading and writing in children and young people. Previously, she has worked in project management, marketing, and editorial. Her work has been published by The Huffington Post, Times Educational Supplement, SCOOP Magazine, Lee and Low Books, DK Books, and Harper Collins.

ANNUM SALMAN is the debut author of her poetry book Sense Me which revolves around the theme of identity, encompassing topics such as gender inequality, mental health, race, culture, and love. Born and bred in Pakistan, Annum completed her MA in creative writing from the University of Surrey. She is a renowned spoken word poet in Pakistan as well as in the UK having had featured shows at That’s What She Said, Dorking is Talking, Woking Literary Lightbox Festival, Nottingham Poetry Festival, SpeakEasy Soho, and The Surrey New Writers Festival.

BURHANA ISLAM was born in Bangladesh and raised in Newcastle. She studied English Literature at Newcastle University before deciding to become a secondary school teacher. After winning a mentorship with Penguin Random House and moving to the outskirts of Manchester, she now writes stories of her own. Her debut Amazing Muslims Who Changed The World celebrates the successes of Muslims across the ages and around the world. She is also the author of the My-Laugh-Out-Life middle-grade comedy series.

FATIMA SAID is a Content and Communications assistant at Amaliah. She develops the website’s editorial content and works closely with emerging writers to bring their pieces to life with the aim of amplifying the voices and perspectives of Muslim women. She has a background in politics, having previously worked at Chatham House and in the Houses of Parliament. Her experience in politics drives her passion and interest in social reform and justice. Fatima enjoys writing in her spare time – she made the prestigious shortlist for the Merky Books New Writers award in 2021 and is currently working on her first novel.

GABY MORGAN is an Editorial Director at Macmillan Children’s Books. She has compiled many bestselling anthologies including Read Me and Laugh: A Funny Poem for Every Day of the Year, Poems from the First World War, Fairy Poems – which was short-listed for the CLPE Award – and the Macmillan Collector’s Library poetry series featuring anthologies on Happiness, Nature, Childhood, Travelling, Stillness and the Sea.

HANZLA is a previous winner of the Young Muslim Writers Awards. He studied English Language and Literature at university and now works as a producer in the television industry. He is currently directing his first film for Channel 4.

HELENA NELSON is a poet, and the founder and editor of HappenStance Press. Her own published work began with a pamphlet, Mr and Mrs Philpott on Holiday at Aucherawe & Other Poems. Her first book, Starlight on Water, was an Aldeburgh/Jerwood First Collection Prize winner. She writes both serious and light verse, and has performed widely. A former teacher in further education, she occasionally works as an Arvon tutor. She reviews for a variety of magazines as well as posting regular blogs entries on HappenStance’s website. In 2016, she published a HappenStance bestseller: How (Not) to Get Your Poetry Published, a book that collects the insights and ideas she has gathered over the last fourteen years in poetry publishing.

JAZZMINE BREARY is Sales, Marketing & Publicity Manager at award-winning independent publishing house Jacaranda Books where she has worked since its launch, working closely with founder Valerie Brandes across multiple areas of the business. In 2020 Jazzmine was named a Bookseller Rising Star, recognising her contribution to publishing and her promising future in the industry. She is curator of the #TwentyIn2020 Black Writers, British Voices Festival, created in collaboration with Fane Productions and TGRG Agency, celebrating Black British writing talent and the writers of Jacaranda’s #TwentyIn2020 publishing programme. In 2015, Jazzmine contributed to the Writing the Future report; her article, Let’s Not Forget explored the legacy of diverse and particularly Black publishing in the UK. She is a regular speaker on issues of diversity and inclusivity in publishing. Her speaking engagements include M-Fest, the LBF Inclusivity in Publishing Conference, the Bradford Literature Festival, and more. She has been featured in The Voice newspaper, Actual Size magazine, on BBC Radio London, The Beat London, and more recently BBC Radio Gloucestershire. She has been a mentor on the MA in Publishing at Kingston University and served on the committee of Women in Publishing UK from 2012-2014.

KHALEEL MUHAMMAD is an internationally renowned nasheed artist who has performed globally and released three albums. Khaleel is the author of the children’s book Muslim All-Stars. He has appeared in several television shows, adverts, and the Disney film Cinderella. On TV he has presented Khaleel’s Make & Do show, and The Muslim Kid Show. He is the radio presenter of the double award-winning Kids Round Show on Inspire 105.1FM. Khaleel designed and illustrated the children’s books Allah’s Amazing Messenger (pbuh) by S.J. Sear, Adams Adventures by Mariah Derissy, and his own Muslim Family Colouring Book, now in its second revised edition. Khaleel has most recently self-published his second book Muslim All-Stars Monster Mayhem.

LUQMAN ALI is the founding Artistic Director of Khayaal Theatre, the first multi award-winning professional theatre company dedicated to the dramatic interpretation of Muslim and interfaith literature and the experience of Muslims in the modern world for the stage, film, radio, publishing and education. He is currently working to nurture an inclusive humanitarian discourse of story and dream in Muslim communities and between those communities and wider society through Khayaal’s national on-demand Theatre-without-Walls programme that includes adaptations of wisdom tales from Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam while also developing the company’s next medium scale production exploring the intersection of Britain and Islam in the story of coffee.

MALIKA is a poet and spoken word artist who served as Peterborough’s Poet Laureate 2019-2021. She is also a creative producer, social researcher, and activist. She uses poetry to inspire and deliver messages around mental health, justice, reflectivity, and self-empowerment. Malika is active in many projects around community cohesion, and inspiring and empowering young people in being confident in who they are and knowing their value in society. She has performed and appeared on TV and radio shows, and at events in London, Luton, and Peterborough, including BBC Look East, BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, Inspire FM, and Salaam Radio.

MARCUS WICKER is the author of Silencer (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017)—winner of the Society of Midland Authors Award— and Maybe the Saddest Thing (Harper Perennial, 2012), selected by D.A. Powell for the National Poetry Series. He is the recipient of a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, 2011 Ruth Lilly Fellowship, as well as fellowships from The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and Cave Canem. Wicker’s poems have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The Atlantic, Oxford American, and POETRY. He is Poetry Editor of Southern Indiana Review, and an Associate Professor of English at the University of Memphis where he teaches in the MFA program.

Photo Credit: Kristyn Greenfield.

MARIAM HAKIM is the founder of children’s publishing imprint Waw Stories. After studying English Literature and Media at university, Mariam worked in Communications and Marketing. Mariam later embarked on writing for children and has authored three Muslim children’s picture books. Her most recent book Wake up! It’s the Ramadan Drummer has won the Promise Prize for text by Faber. Mariam’s writing has a particular focus on celebrating powerful stories from Muslim cultures as she believes all children should be able to see their identities reflected in stories. Mariam also hosts an annual read aloud ‘Hakawati’ series on Waw Stories’ social media.

MATHEW TOBIN teaches English and Children’s Literature in Primary ITE and leads several modules on the MA/PGCert in Education with a focus on the history of Children’s Literature and Reading for Pleasure. Since joining Oxford Brookes University in 2014, after sixteen years of Primary teaching and leading in Oxfordshire, Mathew has been asked to deliver several keynotes across the UK on Reading for Pleasure, Picturebooks and Engaging pupils in the reading and writing process. He has research interests in children’s literature and the Reading for Pleasure agenda and is currently working on his doctorate in exploring multimodal approaches to locality-based children’s literature.

MICHAL WICHEREK trained as director at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, studied film and theatre at Wroclaw University in Poland and gained a Masters in writing for film from the University of Sheffield. Michal set up Box Clever Theatre as a company dedicated to original writing for young people. It has produced and toured over 300 productions and continues to champion the provision of live theatre in schools.

MOLLY ROSENBERG is Director of the Royal Society of Literature, the UK’s charity for the advancement of literature. Molly has worked at the RSL for over ten years, and is thrilled to be working on the RSL’s five-year bicentenary festival RSL 200 introducing a number of new projects that show how much Literature Matters. Molly has previously worked at the Royal Opera House and Southbank Centre, and as an independent researcher, and holds an MPhil in Irish Writing and Literature from Trinity College Dublin.

NADINE AISHA JASSAT is the author of Let Me Tell You This. She has been published widely including in Picador’s It’s Not About the Burqa, 404 Ink’s Nasty Women, and Bloodaxe’s Staying Human. Nadine has performed internationally, including with Edinburgh International Book Festival’s Outriders Africa, and has appeared across media, including BBC’s The Big Scottish Book Club. She has taught creative writing across the UK, including for BBC’s Words First programme and The Arvon Foundation. She has won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award, and was shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award and a Herald Scotland Outstanding Literature award. Nadine was included in Jackie Kay’s International Literature Showcase selection.

Photo Credit: Chris Scott.

NIZRANA FAROOK was born and raised in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and the landscapes of her home country always find their way into the stories she writes. Her debut novel, The Girl Who Stole an Elephant, was the biggest selling middle grade debut of 2020. It was a Waterstones Book of the Month, longlisted for the Blue Peter Book Award and Jhalak Prize, and nominated for the Carnegie Medal. Her second book, The Boy Who Met a Whale, which was out this year, was an Indie Book of the Month and one of Booktrust’s Best Books of 2021. She has a master’s degree in creative writing for children.

NOOR YUSUF is a poet and author. Her works have garnered her awards at both local and national level, including being a threetimes winner of the Young Muslim Writers Award. At the age of 15, she authored The Soliloquy of the Full Moon, an original work on the nativity of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). This thousand-line narrative epic of fully metered English poetry fused classical cadences of Shakespeare and Milton with the equally classical genres of Arabic praise and biographical poetry. She will soon release Through the Blue Gate, the sequel to Beyond the Forest. These are the first two instalments of Adventures with the Awliya, a series of adventure stories influenced by children’s classics such as the Faraway Tree, as well as accounts of Muslim Sufis and mystics. She has also authored a fully-fledged historical fantasy trilogy. She read linguistics at the University of Birmingham and is pursuing traditional studies of Islamic law, theology and spirituality. Besides writing, she is an artist and choral conductor.

PATRICE LAWRENCE is a multiple-award winning writer for children and young adults, public speaker and occasional arts commentator on radio and TV. She has been nominated for the Carnegie Award six times and was awarded an MBE in the 2021 Queen’s Birthday Honours.

RAISAH AHMED is a Scottish Asian Muslim Writer/Director who is based in Glasgow and is currently working across television and film. She has been longlisted for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab twice - in 2015 with Meet Me By The Water and in 2018 with Safar which is currently in development with Producer Zorana Piggott. She is in development with Zorana Piggott on a WW1 feature, HalfMoon Camp, for Film 4. Her writing credits include CBeebies shows Feeling Better, Molly & Mack and Torc award winning Control, a BBC The Social phone drama, and Aden’s Journey, a short drama about a refugee unaccompanied minor for the Celcis course ‘Caring for Children on the Move’. Alumni of the EIFF Talent Lab 2014, Raisah had her first commissioned short as writer/director Meet Me By The Water premiere at EIFF 2016, which it went on to be programmed by BBC Scotland’s ‘Next Big Thing’ programme. She directed one of BBC 3’s The Break III, CBBC’s Sparks, and most recently Princess MirrorBelle for CBBC.

REHAN KHAN is the author of A King’s Armour, and A Tudor Turk which was nominated for the Carnegie Medal in 2020. These novels have been described as Mission Impossible in the sixteenthcentury. An avid observer of history and the many cross-cultural connections it unearths, Rehan has always been intrigued by how ideas move from one civilisation to the next.

RICHARD GRANT is a performance poet, writer, and producer, also known as Dreadlockalien. He has worked alongside the Young Muslim Writers Awards for many years and is an advocate for spoken word and unheard voices.

DR ROOPA FAROOKI (MRCP MBBS MA Oxon BA Hons) is an NHS Junior Doctor, an author and a lecturer at the University of Oxford on the Masters in Creative Writing. She has written six literary novels with Pan Macmillan and Headline, and a series for children with Oxford University Press, the Double Detectives Medical Mystery Series, with titles The Cure for a Crime and Diagnosis Danger. She has won the John C Laurence Prize from the Author’s Foundation for work that increases understanding between cultures, is the recipient of an Arts Council Prize, and has been listed three times for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her next book is coming out with Bloomsbury in January 2022, titled Everything is True, a junior doctor’s story of life, death and grief in a time of pandemic.

SARMAD MASUD is a writer and director. He most recently directed all four parts of You Don’t Know Me for Snowed-in Productions, a new four-part series written by Tom Edge, based on the book by Imran Mahmood, and broadcasted on BBC. He previously directed the Bulletproof Special for Vertigo and Sky set in Cape Town, having also directed the Season 2 finale. He also recently directed on Ackley Bridge for The Forge and Channel 4. Sarmad’s first feature, My Pure Land, is set and filmed in Pakistan. It premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and was the UK submission to the Oscars in the Foreign Language category. He was also nominated as a Screen International Star of Tomorrow. Previously his short film Two Dosas, funded by Film London, was voted best film in their London Calling Plus category by David Yates, winning at London Short Film Festival, Aspen Shortsfest, River to River in Florence, and Shufflefest voted by Danny Boyle. He also wrote and directed Adha Cup which was the first Urdu language drama commissioned by Channel Four, going on to develop it as a six-part TV series with the BBC.

SEÁN HEWITT is a book critic for The Irish Times and teaches Modern British & Irish Literature at Trinity College Dublin. His debut collection Tongues of Fire is published by Jonathan Cape, won The Laurel Prize, and was shortlisted for The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize, and a Dalkey Literary Award. In 2020, he was chosen by The Sunday Times as one of their ‘30 under 30’ artists in Ireland. He is also the winner of a Northern Writers’ Award, the Resurgence Prize, and an Eric Gregory Award. His book J.M. Synge: Nature, Politics, Modernism is published with Oxford University Press (2021). His memoir, All Down Darkness Wide, is forthcoming from Jonathan Cape in the UK and Penguin Press in the USA in 2022.

Photo Credit: Brid O’Donovan.

SELMA DABBAGH is a British-Palestinian writer of fiction. Her first novel, Out of It, (Bloomsbury, 2011) set between London, Gaza and the Gulf was listed as a Guardian Book of the Year. She has also written radio plays The Brick, for BBC Radio 4 (nominated for the Imison Award) and Sleep It Off, Dr. Schott, for WDR in Germany and had short stories published by Granta, Telegram and International PEN as well as writing for film and stage. Her non-fiction has appeared in the Guardian, London Review of Books, GQ and other publications. She is the editor of We Wrote In Symbols, (Saqi, 2021).

SOPHIA AKRAM is a freelance journalist and researcher with an interest in foreign policy, human rights, and global development. She has been featured in Al Jazeera, Vice and other outlets and regularly writes for diaspora titles. Prior to journalism, Sophia worked in government departments and NGOs on justice, rights, and international issues and is passionate about storytelling to convey difficult subject matters to the masses.

SOPHIE KIRTLEY is a prize-winning poet and children’s author. Her debut novel, The Wild Way Home, was published by Bloomsbury in 2020; it was Waterstones Children’s Book of the Month and has been shortlisted for numerous awards. Her second book, The Way to Impossible Island, has recently been selected as one of Waterstones Best Children’s Paperbacks of 2021.

STEWART FOSTER is an adult and children’s novelist. His books have won multiple school and library awards and are recommended by Empathy Lab and Reading Well. His first adult book, We Used to be Kings, was published in 2014, to the accolades of being selected as The Observers’ Author to Watch, and Amazons’ Rising Star, in the same year. His first children’s book, The Bubble Boy, was published in 2016, winning Sainsbury’s Children’s Book Award in 2016 (Age 9+) and many schools and libraries awards, as well as being nominated for The Carnegie Book Award. The book was published as BUBBLE, in USA and has been translated into eleven languages. Since then, Stewart has written four more children’s books – All the Things That Could Go Wrong, Checkmates, The Perfect Parent Project and Can You Feel the Noise?

Photo Credit: Tallulah Foster.

SUFIYA AHMED is an award-winning and Carnegie nominated children’s and YA author. Her new children’s book, Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, is published by Scholastic UK in January 2022. The book, which profiles the life of the suffragette, will twin with her book Noor-Un-Nissa Inayat Khan, the story of the World War II heroine and spy. Both women feature in Sufiya’s human/girl’s rights workshops in schools, titled The Spy and The Suffragette, as role models for their historical contribution to Britain. Sufiya is also the founder and director of the BIBI Foundation, a non-profit organisation which arranges visits to the Houses of Parliament for diverse and underprivileged children.

SUMAYYA LEE was born in Durban and has worked as an Islamic Studies teacher, Montessori Directress and Teacher of English as a Foreign Language. Her debut, The Story of Maha (Kwela, 2007) was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book – Africa and longlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Award. She was one of the judges for the 2018 Writivism /Kofi Addo Prize for Creative Non-Fiction and is part of the Advisory Board at Writivism.

TIM ROBERTSON is Chief Executive of The Anne Frank Trust UK, an education charity that empowers 10 to 15-year-olds to challenge all forms of prejudice, inspired by the world-famous teenage writer Anne Frank. Tim’s previous roles have included Director of the Royal Society of Literature, Chief Executive of the Koestler Trust for arts by prisoners, and Children’s Social Worker in the London Borough of Camden. Tim has degrees in English Literature from King’ College London and the State University of New York. He is a trustee of the Wordsworth Trust, which preserves the Lake District home of poet William Wordsworth, and he is an Elder at Friends House Quaker Meeting in Euston, where he is chairing a Community Sponsorship project to bring a refugee family to the UK.

YASMIN RAHMAN is a British Muslim born and raised in Hertfordshire. She has an MA in Creative Writing and an MA in Writing for Young People, both with Distinction. Her debut novel, All The Things We Never Said was runner up in the Diverse Book Awards, and nominated for the Carnegie Medal. Her second novel, This is My Truth, was published in July 2021. When she’s not writing, she makes bookish fan art; her designs are sold worldwide on behalf of John Green.