Nesrine Malik

Nesrine Malik FRSL is a Sudanese-born journalist and author of We Need New Stories: Challenging the Toxic Myths Behind Our Age of Discontent (W&N, 2019). Based in London, Malik is a columnist for The Guardian and served as a panellist on the BBC's weekly news discussion programme Dateline London.[1]

Early life[edit]

Malik was born in Khartoum, Sudan, and was raised in Kenya, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.[2][3] She attended The American University in Cairo and the University of Khartoum as an undergraduate, before moving to the UK in 2004 to complete her post-graduate study at the University of London.[3][4]

Career[edit]

Alongside her career as a journalist, Malik spent ten years in emerging markets private equity.[5] She writes on British and American politics, identity politics and Islamophobia, and her comments in The Guardian after the Charlie Hebdo shooting were quoted in New York magazine and The New York Times[6][7] a topic that she also spoke about on the BBC's Newsnight alongside David Aaronovitch of The Times and Myriam François-Cerrah of the New Statesman.[8] Malik's columns and dispatches for Foreign Policy magazine focus on Sudanese politics.[9]

In 2015, Malik and Peter Hitchens discussed the role of the hijab and Muslim cultural identity in Britain on Channel 4 News.[10] In 2016, Malik was one of three columnists featured in The Guardian's "The Web We Want" series discussing online abuse and negative comments they had received online regarding their work.[11][12] Following this, she contributed to a session at the British Parliament with the aim of tackling the chilling effect online abuse has on emerging writers.[citation needed]

In 2018, journalist Peter Oborne described Malik in the British Journalism Review as writing "with wit and punch about race, class, and gender, as well as Islam". Oborne characterised her as an example of a rising generation of politicized Muslim journalists who "use their identities to shed light on the inequalities in British society. They treat Islam as a political identity as much as a religious one. Being Muslim gives this millennial generation an air not of religious but of political defiance. For them, it is a tool for showing that Britain remains a country dominated by a small group of people."[13]

In 2019, Malik published We Need New Stories: Challenging the Toxic Myths Behind Our Age of Discontent, which was described by the South African Sunday Times as a book in which "Malik examines and deciphers falsehoods that society has come to accept as truth."[14][15][16] It was released on paperback in 2020, and a new edition was published in 2021.[17][18]

In 2020, she appeared on The Moral Maze as part of a debate hosted by Michael Buerk along with Mona Siddiqui, Tim Stanley, Andrew Doyle; the debate was over the "morality of the British Empire".[19]

Honours and awards[edit]

In 2017, Malik was nominated "Journalist/Writer of the Year" by the Diversity in Media Awards.[20] In the same year, she was honoured as "Society and Diversity Commentator of the Year" at the Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards.[21]

In 2019, the Orwell Foundation longlisted Malik for the Orwell Prize for her work on Britain's "social evils" in "exposing the hostile environment".[22] In both 2019 and 2020, Malik was shortlisted as "Comment Journalist of the Year" at the British Journalism Awards.[23] In 2021 the Orwell Foundation longlisted Malik again for the Orwell Prize for journalism.

In 2021, Malik received the inaugural Robert B. Silvers Prize for Journalism.[24][25] She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2023.[26]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Hill, Jane (22 April 2018). "Dateline London". BBC News – via Internet Archive.
  2. ^ Heller, Jason (June 9, 2021). "'We Need New Stories' Asks: Why Are People Prone To Believing The Largest Of Lies?". NPR. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  3. ^ a b "We need new stories". University of Sydney. Retrieved 25 October 2021.
  4. ^ Malik, Nesrine (5 March 2018). "'I felt a nausea of fury' – how I faced the cruelty of Britain's immigration system". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 October 2021.
  5. ^ "Nesrine Malik". Curtis Brown. Retrieved 3 September 2019.
  6. ^ Zavadski, Katie (8 January 2015). "A Guide to Charlie Hebdo Opinions". New York Magazine. Retrieved 17 May 2017.
  7. ^ Schuessler, Jennifer (4 May 2015). "Charlie Hebdo Award at PEN Gala Sparks More Debate". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 September 2019.
  8. ^ Wark, Kirsty (8 January 2015). "Toleration After the Charlie Hebdo Attacks". BBC Newsnight, 3 September 2019.
  9. ^ "Nesrine Malik". Foreign Policy. Retrieved 17 May 2017.
  10. ^ Frei, Matt (7 October 2015). "Hijab in Britain: Peter Hitchens and Nesrine Malik debate". Channel 4 News. Accessed 3 December 2019.
  11. ^ Cornish, Audie (29 April 2016). "'The Guardian' Launches New Series Examining Online Abuse". NPR.org. Retrieved 17 May 2017.
  12. ^ Gardiner, Becky; Mahama Mansfield; Ian Anderson; Josh Holder; Daan Louter; Monica Ulmanu (12 April 2016). "The dark side of Guardian comments". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 3 September 2019.
  13. ^ Oborne, Peter (March 2018). "We do not Report Fairly on Muslims". British Journalism Review. 29 (1): 29–34. doi:10.1177/0956474818764596. ISSN 0956-4748.
  14. ^ "2019 in books: what you'll be reading this year". The Guardian. 5 January 2019. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2 September 2019.
  15. ^ Malik, Nesrine (6 September 2019). "Great Britain and the toxic myth of virtuous origin". Huck. Retrieved 8 May 2021.
  16. ^ Sunday Times Books (17 November 2019). "BOOK BITES - Nesrine Malik, August Thomas, Herman Koch". Sunday Times. Retrieved 8 May 2021.
  17. ^ Dawson, Brit (20 August 2020). "Nesrine Malik challenges the myths that hold back revolution". Dazed. Retrieved 8 May 2021.
  18. ^ PW Staff (17 February 2021). "The Most Anticipated Books of Spring 2021". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 8 May 2021.
  19. ^ "Moral Maze, The Morality of the British Empire". BBC Radio 4. 25 July 2020. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  20. ^ "Diversity in Media on Twitter". Twitter. Retrieved 17 May 2017.
  21. ^ GNM press office (27 November 2017). "Guardian and Observer commentators win six Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards". The Guardian.
  22. ^ "Nesrine Malik". The Orwell Prize. The Orwell Foundation. Retrieved 2 September 2019.
  23. ^ "British Journalism Awards 2019 shortlist announced". Press Gazette. 5 November 2019.
  24. ^ Caplan, Walker (5 January 2022). "Here are the winners of the inaugural Silvers-Dudley Prizes for criticism and journalism". Literary Hub. Retrieved 7 January 2022.
  25. ^ "Winners of the Silvers-Dudley Prizes Revealed". Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved 7 January 2022.
  26. ^ Creamer, Ella (2023-07-12). "Royal Society of Literature aims to broaden representation as it announces 62 new fellows". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2023-07-13.

External links[edit]