Lebanese-Palestinian poet wins prestigious award in Australia
Hasib Hourani’s book ‘rock flight’ recognized at New South Wales Literary Awards 2025
SYDNEY, Australia (MNTV) – Hasib Hourani, a Lebanese-Palestinian writer based in Sydney, Australia, took home the prestigious Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry at the New South Wales Literary Awards 2025.
Hourani’s debut book “rock flight” impressed judges with its innovative and urgent exploration of displacement, identity, and resistance.
The awards recognized outstanding contributions to Australian literature, awarding $360,000 across 14 categories.
Formally inventive and politically urgent, “rock flight” blends free verse, erasure, typographical experimentation, and lyric essay to explore what it means to be born stateless and made refugees by inheritance, reports Australian Muslim Times.
Hourani’s writing reflects a deep engagement with both the personal and structural realities of displacement, creating what the judges called “a multilayered call to action.”
“This masterful long poem shows astonishing control over a wide variety of formal and technical elements,” the judges wrote. “The writing locates the human and immediate in events that have been distorted, ignored, or manipulated by government and media.”
A 2020 recipient of The Wheeler Centre’s Next Chapter Scheme, Hourani’s work has been published by such esteemed literary publications as Meanjin, Overland, Australian Poetry, and Cordite.
Hourani’s win is particularly poignant in a year marked by the genocide in Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 53,000 men, women, and children. His voice, shaped by the experience of being born stateless, speaks urgently to both personal grief and collective resistance.
Other finalists in the 2025 awards reflected similarly rich and nuanced explorations of identity and community. Jumaana Abdu was shortlisted for the Multicultural NSW Award for her debut novel “Translations,” a quiet, lyrical story about a woman and her daughter forging a new life in rural New South Wales after profound personal loss.
“There is an elegant and quiet power in Abdu’s tale,” wrote the judges.
“‘Translations’ is about the connective tissue of relationships… Her writing is elevated and evocative.”
Samah Sabawi was shortlisted for her intergenerational memoir “Cactus Pear For My Beloved” — a sweeping narrative that follows her family’s journey from British-ruled Palestine to Redland Bay, Queensland. The book is a tribute to culture, land, memory, and resistance.
“A luminous and lyrical tribute to family, exile, and resistance, Cactus Pear For My Beloved traces a century of Palestinian displacement through intimate storytelling,” the judges said. “Sabawi’s prose is infused with memory and longing, crafting a powerful meditation on love, loss, and the enduring connection to land and identity.”
In the nonfiction category, Abbas El-Zein was shortlisted for the Douglas Stewart Prize for “Bullet, Paper, Rock,” a vivid memoir that weaves personal history with political upheaval, from 1970s Beirut to the Arab Spring and beyond.
“El-Zein’s writing is a dazzling combination of precision and playfulness,” noted the panel. “It shimmers, shapeshifts, and beckons the reader to follow.”
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