{"id":55846,"date":"2025-08-09T17:20:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T17:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/55846\/"},"modified":"2025-08-09T17:20:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T17:20:09","slug":"perth-writer-mohammed-massoud-morsi-wins-dorothy-hewett-award-for-his-novel-the-hair-of-the-pigeon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/55846\/","title":{"rendered":"Perth writer Mohammed Massoud Morsi wins Dorothy Hewett Award for his novel The Hair of the Pigeon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">A Perth writer who grew up in Denmark and Egypt has won a major literary award for his \u201cgripping novel\u201d set in the Middle East.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">Mohammed Massoud Morsi recently received the 2025 Dorothy Hewett Award for his unpublished fiction manuscript The Hair of the Pigeon.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">The $10,000 prize judges said his \u201cgripping novel speaks powerfully to the moment we are in\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">\u201cIn the tangled streets of millennial Damascus, Ghassan and Sama are childhood friends,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/4b5f525c3f2dc092f944e7caf327e550dee4b7dd.jpg\" alt=\"Mohammed Massoud Morsi has won the 2025 Dorothy Hewett Award.\" class=\"css-16r7l45-StyledImage en5ut4d0\"\/>Camera IconMohammed Massoud Morsi has won the 2025 Dorothy Hewett Award. Credit: Supplied<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">\u201cAs they grow into adulthood in the convulsions of the Arab Spring, violence erupts intimately into their lives.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">\u201cThe fatality of these days, between regimes and in the shadow of violent expulsions, plays out with the precision of a primal scene.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">Morsi, who was born in Copenhagen in 1975 before moving to Egypt with his Egyptian parents and then back to Denmark for schooling, thanked the judges for selecting his work from more than 300 entries.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">\u201cAs a journalist who has spent time listening to people from all walks of life, I am grateful that not only mine, but their stories get a chance to be told,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">\u201cIn Australia we have the privilege of peace and a chance to consider lives different from our own.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">\u201cAnd now, with current events around the world, I think this is a wake-up call for all of us to understand the stories of those of us who yearn for justice.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">\u201cMy wish is this book is received in the manner in which it is given. I have always been drawn to the stories that bind us and give us the sense of belonging to each other; that which we dream of but struggle speaking about.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">\u201cThis book, this story, began almost 20 years ago. I never imagined that this was the way it would come to life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">Morsi will receive a publishing contract and manuscript development with UWA Publishing and $10,000 from the Copyright Agency.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">The novel would be published in the first half of 2026.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">The judges were Tony Hughes-d\u2019Aeth, Caitlin Maling, James Jiang and Kate Pickard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Perth writer who grew up in Denmark and Egypt has won a major literary award for his&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,457,134,46,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-55846","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-books","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-perth","13":"tag-wa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}