How is masculinity shaped by class, race and sexuality? Michael Mohammed Ahmad's latest novel The Lebs is a frank exploration of these issues, at times excoriating and trenchant, at other times, tender, joyful and funny. This portrait of young, male muslims in the western suburbs tells us about many aspects of Australia - about young white women, about the multifaceted muslim community, about migration and belonging. Ahmed is interviewed by queer Arab poet and editor Omar Sakr as both talk about what their writing brings to the field of Australian literature and how it renovates the category of the white nation.
MICHAEL MOHAMMED AHMAD is an Arab-Australian writer, editor, teacher and community arts worker. He is the founder and director of Sweatshop, a literacy movement in Western Sydney devoted to empowering culturally and linguistically diverse artists through creative writing. Mohammed's essays and short stories have appeared in the Sydney Review of Books, The Guardian, Heat, Seizure, The Lifted Brow, The Australian and Coming of Age: Australian Muslim Stories. His debut novel, The Tribe, received a 2015 Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelists of the Year Award. Mohammed received his Doctorate of Creative Arts at Western Sydney University in 2017.
OMAR SAKR is the Arab-Australian author of These Wild Houses, a debut collection of poetry shortlisted for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award. His poetry has been published in English, Arabic, and Spanish, in numerous journals and anthologies including: Prairie Schooner, Griffith Review, Overland, Meanjin, Peril, Cordite Poetry Review, The Best Australian Poems, The New Arab, and Circulo de Poesía. Runner-up in the Judith Wright Poetry Prize, he has also been shortlisted for the ACU Poetry Prize, the Story Wine Prize, and the Fair Australia Poetry Prize. A recipient of an Australia Council for the Arts grant, Omar’s non-fiction has been published in such places as The Saturday Paper, The Guardian, Daily Life, Kill Your Darlings, Going Down Swinging, Archer, Junkee, and SBS Life, among others. He is the poetry editor of the Lifted Brow.
