Morsi wins 2025 Dorothy Hewett Award

Mohammed Massoud Morsi has won the 2025 Dorothy Hewett Award for his unpublished fiction manuscript The Hair of the Pigeon.

Chosen from a shortlist of six, Morsi receives a publishing contract and manuscript development with UWA Publishing, and $10,000 in prize money, courtesy of the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

An Egyptian-Danish-Australian photographer, journalist and writer, Morsi has published work in all three of his traditional languages. He discovered journalism made people yesterday’s news and turned to writing novels instead.

Judges Tony Hughes-d’Aeth, Caitlin Maling, James Jiang and Kate Pickard said, ‘In the tangled streets of millennial Damascus, Ghassan and Sama are childhood friends. As they grow into adulthood in the convulsions of the Arab Spring, violence erupts intimately into their lives. The fatality of these days, between regimes and in the shadow of violent expulsions, plays out with the precision of a primal scene. This gripping novel speaks powerfully to the moment we are in.’

First awarded in 2017, the Dorothy Hewett Award is open to Australian writers across the categories of fiction, narrative nonfiction and poetry.

The 2024 winner of the award was Kaya Ortiz for Past and Parallel Lives.

UWA Publishing plans to publish The Hair of the Pigeon in the first half of 2026.

Category: Awards Local news