Amal Awad is a journalist, screenwriter, author and performer. She has contributed to ELLE, Frankie, Meanjin, Going Down Swinging, Daily Life, Sheilas, SBS Life and Junkee. She has also produced and presented for ABC Radio National and has held senior editorial roles at a number of trade publications. As a public speaker, Amal appears at schools, universities and writers’ festivals around Australia. She presents workshops on storytelling and creativity, has been a regular panellist on ABC TV’s The Drum and was a TEDx Macquarie speaker in 2019. As a screenwriter, Amal has worked on several film and television projects and is in development on more. She has also directed short films, a pursuit she continues alongside writing and performing. Amal is the author of Courting Samira, This Is How You Get Better and The Things We See in the Light as well as the non-fiction books The Incidental Muslim, Beyond Veiled Clichés: The Real Lives of Arab Women, Fridays with My Folks: Stories on Ageing, Illness and Life, and In My Past Life I Was Cleopatra. She has also contributed to the anthologies Growing Up Muslim in Australia: Coming of Age and Some Girls Do… (My Life as a Teenager).