The Hair of the PigeonĀ is an unpublished novel that is shortlisted for the 2025 Dorothy Hewett Award. In this short interview, with UWA Publishing intern Reilly McGrath, Mohammed Massoud Morsi shares how it feels to be shortlisted and his advice for writers looking to submit to the Dorothy Hewett Award in the future.
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Mohammed Massoud Morsi is an Egyptian-Danish-Australian photographer, journalist and writer. His work has been published in all three of his traditional languages. Morsi discovered journalism made people yesterdayās news and turned to writing novels instead. He has a talent for reaching to the heart of existence in a complex world and looks to important questions, finding that which is quintessentially human within much broader struggles. His work is enriched by his photographerās eye for detail and a passion for speaking out for those suppressed, challenging and breaking common narratives all at once.
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The Hair of the Pigeon is a compulsive, poetic love story of two young Palestinians in Syria, Ghassan and Sama, set against the backdrop of the Arab Spring and the unspoken world of the Yarmouk camp. Their friend Badawi is an open book of fists and fast-money schemes. He dreams of winning the local football tournament while Ghassan fixes cars in the Black Alley. Unflinching Sama trains pigeons to deliver the secrets of the displaced but her own tragedy is upended by the civil war, scattered alongside their lives until they find each other again as refugees in Denmark.āÆ The 2025 Dorothy Hewett Award judges commented "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 aĀ primal scene. This gripping novel speaks powerfully to the moment we are in."
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UWA Publishing intern, Reilly McGrath, interviewed Morsi about his shortlisting:
Reilly: What doesĀ beingāÆshortlisted for the Dorothy Hewett Award mean to you?āÆĀ
Morsi: Being shortlisted is having my work recognised which is important, not only myself but also for other voices in Australian literature writing stories from far beyond the confines of our island border.Ā
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Reilly: How long have you been working on this piece, and what made you want toĀ submit to the DHA this year?āÆĀ
Morsi: The story which I built my novel upon, I first came across in 2006 and developed a relationship with some of the characters until 2015. As with my first novelĀ The Palace of Angels, The Hair of the Pigeon is based on a true story and I began writing it in 2021. I submitted the story in the hope of sparking the interest of Australian publishers in the story and my work.Ā
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Reilly: Do you have any advice for writers considering submitting their work in to the Dorothy Hewett Award in the future?
Morsi: The best advice I can share is toĀ submit well edited work. I had edited my novel about 8/10 times, also in two extensive rounds with grants from the WA department of the arts and the Australia council of the arts. My agent has followed me throughout this work and when she reviewed my last edit, she then fully encouraged the submission.Ā
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The Hair of the PigeonĀ is an unpublished fiction manuscript shortlisted for the 2025 Dorothy Hewett Award. The winner will be announced late July.
Reilly McGrath is a former Bachelor of Arts student from the University of Western Australia, with First Class Honours in English Literary Studies. Ā
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Check out our interviews with the other 5 shortlisted writers:
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