Amal Awad

Amal Awad

About Amal

Amal Awad is a journalist, author, screenwriter and performer. She has contributed to such publications as ELLEFrankieMeanjin, The Guardian, Going Down Swinging, Daily Life, Sheilas, SBS Life and Junkee. Amal has also produced and presented for ABC Radio National.

Outside of mainstream media, Amal has held senior editorial roles at a number of trade media publications, reporting on such industries as financial services, property and pharmacy.

Amal has appeared as a speaker or panelist at schools, universities and writers’ festivals around Australia, and she also facilitates workshops, covering topics such as diversity, multiculturalism, women’s issues and pop culture. She has also been a regular panelist on ABC TV’s The Drum. In 2019, she was a TEDx Macquarie speaker, with a talk on ‘Moving beyond the token minority’ in film and television.

Amal is the author of five books, including three novels – Courting SamiraThis is How You Get Better and The Things We See in the Light – and the non-fiction books The Incidental MuslimBeyond Veiled Clichés: The Real Lives of Arab WomenFridays With My Folks – Stories on Ageing, Illness and Life, and In My Past Life I was Cleopatra. She has contributed to the anthologies Growing Up Muslim in Australia and Some Girls Do … (My Life as a Teenager).

Amal’s latest novel, Bitter & Sweet, was published in 2023.

Amal is currently also working on several film and television projects, including her Screen Australia-funded series, Over My Dead Body.

Photo: Tim Levy for the Copyright Agency