| Onjali Q. Raúf | |
| Occupation: | Children's writer |
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Onjali Qatara Raúf (born February 1981[1]) is a British author and the founder of the two NGOs: Making Herstory,[2] a woman's rights organisation tackling the abuse and trafficking of women and girls in the UK; and O's Refugee Aid Team, which raises awareness and funds to support refugee frontline aid organisations.[3]
Raúf is of British Bangladeshi heritage. Her work is informed in part by her experiences of racism in childhood. "When I started being called Paki, I started to feel [my difference]. I wondered: why is there no one who looks like me in the books? So I wanted to write those characters,” she said in a 2019 interview with The Guardian.[4] Raúf was raised in London.
Raúf's début children's novel published by Orion Children's Books, The Boy at the Back of the Class won numerous awards,[5] drawing on her own experience delivering emergency aid convoys for refugee families surviving in Calais and Dunkirk.[6] Inspired by a Syrian mother and baby she encountered in a Calais refugee camp, it portrays the refugee crisis through the eyes of a child.[7] It was a Sunday Times Bestseller, winner of the 2019 Blue Peter Book Award for Best Story,[8] [9] overall winner of the 2019 Waterstones Children's Book Prize,[10] [11] and nominated for the Carnegie Medal Children's Book Award.[12] In the same year she was also shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize, awarded to the book of the year by a writer of colour[13] and for breakthrough author in the BAMB (Books Are My Bag) Readers' Awards.[14]
Her second book The Star Outside My Window covered hope and resilience in the face of domestic violence through the innocent eyes of 10-year-old girl.[15] This was shortlisted for the inaugural Diverse Book Awards,[16] and 2020 British Book Awards: Books of the Year.[17] It also made the longlist of the UK Literacy Association Book awards.[18]
Nominated for the 2024 Red Dot Book Awards,[19] her fourth book “The Lion Above The Door” tackles the issue of historical racism, shining a light on the stories our history books have yet to contain. Inspired by the forgotten exploits of Wing Commander Tan Kay Hai, a decorated, Singaporean flying ace who flew with the Royal Air Force during the Second World War on at least 190 missions. In researching the book she traveled to Singapore and different museums and RAF bases in the UK to track down records or mentions of him.[20] Eventually finding his grave at Kranji War Cemetery and meeting with his family after an appeal to track them down in The Straits Times.[21]
She was named as one of the BBC 100 Women, a list and multi-format series of 100 inspiring and influential women from around the world, for 2019.[22] In September 2019, she spoke at A Woman's Place UK conference; her speech criticized the inclusion of transgender women in public places including "toilets or changing rooms, specialist services or a refuge, school toilets or prison cells or hospital wards." She said that regardless of any steps taken to transition, transgender women "will still have strengths, experiences, privileges that we women will never ever have been gifted".[23] That December she talked about "Why children are our most powerful hope for change" at TEDxLondonWomen event.[24]
Her 2021 Barrington Stoke publication, The Great (Food) Bank Heist (illustrations by Elisa Paganelli), was a child's perspective on food poverty in the UK.[25]
In addition to writing for publications such as The Guardian,[26] Raúf is also a contributor to the BBC Radio 2 program Pause For Thought.[27]
Raúf was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to literature and women's rights.
In September 2023, Raúf signed an open letter from gender critical advocacy group Sex Matters urging UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak "to take urgent action to halt an escalating campaign of violence and intimidation against women in the name of 'trans rights' ".[28]
She wrote 11 books