Sara M. Saleh and Omar Sakr Shortlisted for 2024 ALS Gold Medal

Congratulations to Sara M. Saleh and Omar Sakr on their shortlisting nominations, for the 2024 ALS Gold Medal.

The ALS Gold Medal is awarded annually for an outstanding literary work in the preceding calendar year. The Medal was inaugurated by the Australian Literature Society, which was founded in Melbourne in 1899 and incorporated into the Association for the Study of Australian Literature in 1982.

Sara M. Saleh is nominated for her collection of poetry The Flirtation of Girls / Ghazal el-Banat

With her first full-length poetry collection, Sara M Saleh introduces us to the polychromatic lives of girls and women as they come into being amidst war, colonial and patriarchal violence, and exile and migration. This searing work interrogates and represents the complexity of Arab-Australian Muslim women’s identities as they negotiate an irresistible world full of music and family, grit and grief, love and loss.

Saleh’s poetry is not only an inherently political act, but a deeply personal one, charged with multilayered conversations and meditations amongst three generations of women in Sara’s family. Her poems dazzle with an incantatory force of spirit, survival and selfhood, proving without a doubt that Saleh is one of this country’s most compelling, contemporary poets.

Omar Sakr is nominated for his collection of poetry, Non-Essential Work.

In this exciting follow-up to his acclaimed collection The Lost Arabs, award-winning poet Omar Sakr delves deep into his loves and losses to create a riveting literary experience. Asking questions of timeliness and timelessness, ranging between the present and the past, Non-Essential Work is a restless and relentless volume that showcases a poet unquestionably in his prime.

Well done to all the 2024 shortlisted authors.