Alghurabi wins 2017 Scribe Nonfiction Prize

Lur Alghurabi has won the 2017 Scribe Nonfiction Prize for Young Writers for her entry ‘Letters from the Grave’ .

Alghurabi was selected from a shortlist of 12 writers and will receive a cash prize of $3000 and an editorial mentorship with Scribe to develop her work.

Scribe senior editor Julia Carlomagno described ‘Letters from the Grave’ as ‘an urgent and deeply moving piece about the author’s family escape from Saddam’s Iraq and the search for somewhere to call home’. Carlomagno also praised it for its interweaving of ‘literary and visual material’.

‘It’s a privilege that I am even able to write, let alone that my writing be recognised, enjoyed and validated’, said Alghurabi on winning the prize. ‘In “Letters from the Grave”, my family and I are constantly, physically and emotionally, looking for a home. To think that eventually I have found a home in writing, and that this home is a warm, welcoming space that will encourage and celebrate voices of colour, I could not be happier.’

Toby Fehily was highly commended for his shortlisted piece ‘It’s Not an Aircraft’, a biographical work about the founder of Australia’s first civilian UFO group, Edgar Jarrold.

The Scribe Nonfiction Prize is open to writers aged 30 or under who are writing a longform or book-length work in any nonfiction genre. For more information about the award, visit the Scribe website here.

Category: Local news