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Winners in the third cycle of the Emirates Novel Award, held under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, and powered by twofour54, were announced today at a press conference in the presence of Jamal Al Shehhi, Secretary General of the Emirates Novel Award, and jury members.

Winners were selected from a pool of 25 submissions by members of a special jury that included: Mariam Jumaa Faraj, Abdullah Al Showaikh, Shakir Noury, Mohammed Wardy, and Abdulwahab Al Hammadi.

In the “Best Novel” category, “Guard of the Sun” by Eman Yousef, and “Cities and Women” by Saeed Al Badi shared the first-place, while “Days of the memory of Sinmar” by Mansour Al Alawy received the second place in the same category and “What if” by Sara Al Abbadi received a Commendation award. Ayesha Al Alili received the first-place award in the “Best Short Novel” category for her novel, “Iron Swing”, and “Naked Roots” by Hasna Al Salmi was named the winner of the category’s second-place. “Citizen Sayfoul” by Salem Al Aghbari was awarded a Commendation award as part of the winners in the “Best Short Novel” category.

Maryam Al Mheiri, Acting CEO of twofour54, said: “twofour54 supports original content creation across all media platforms so we are delighted to empower the Emirates Novel Awards, which encourages young Emirati authors to write and publish new literary works in the Arabic language. With this year being the Year of Reading in the UAE, this initiative serves not only to add to the rich literary culture of Emirati society but also enforces a culture of reading embraced as daily practice. We are grateful for the support we receive from His Highness Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan which helps position this initiative prominently in the region as it focuses on developing and training young talent on the right foundations of writing in collaboration with twofour54’s creative lab.  I congratulate the winners on their achievement today and look forward to reading the winning novels of a new generation of Emirati authors.”

Jamal Al Shehhi, Secretary General of the Emirates Novel Award, commented: “The Emirates Novel Award proves to be a highly successful initiative year on year through the number of submissions we receive and the quality of content created. The third cycle was highly successful and competitive that we had to name two winners in the first place of the Award’s “Best Novel” category.”

“We have witnessed many talented Emiratis embrace literature and novels as an avenue to document their thoughts and present them to the public through our programme and awards and we are very proud of the winning projects and commend these for delivering works of such high quality. I would like to encourage the remaining participants to continue writing. Participating at the Emirates Novel Award is the first step towards success and this experience puts Emirati authors well on the path to create more work in the future,” he added.

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