Nesrine Malik Explained

Nesrine Malik 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

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

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 Guardians "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.

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

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]

External links

Notes and References

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