Amal Awad

Amal Awad is a journalist, screenwriter, author and performer. She has contributed to The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, ELLE, Frankie, Meanjin, Going Down Swinging, Daily Life, Sheilas, SBS Life and Junkee, as well as produced and presented for ABC Radio National.

As a public speaker, Amal appears at schools, universities and writers’ festivals around Australia. She presents workshops on storytelling and creativity, has been a regular panellist on ABC TV’s The Drum and was a TEDx Macquarie speaker in 2019.

Amal is the author of Courting Samira and This is How You Get Better as well as the non-fiction books The Incidental Muslim, Beyond Veiled Clichés: The Real Lives of Arab Women, Fridays with my Folks: Stories on Ageing, Illness and Life, and In My Past Life I Was Cleopatra. She has also contributed to the anthologies Growing Up Muslim in Australia: Coming of Age and Some Girls Do…: My Life as a Teenager.

As a screenwriter, Amal has several film and television projects in development. She has also directed short films, a pursuit she continues alongside writing and performing. Her next novel, The Things We See in the Light, will be published in 2021.