Mawred Announces Literary ‘Production Award’ Grants

MAY 13, 2026 — Earlier this month, Al-Mawred Al-Thaqafy (Culture Resource) announced the winners of the 2026 round of their Production Awards, a program that “aims to promote and encourage a new generation of artists and writers from the Arab region by supporting their first creative projects in cinema, literature, music, performing arts, and visual arts.”

In the literature category, the jury — made up of Hammour Ziade, Jokhka Alharthi, and Asmaa Azaizeh — selected six projects from Sudan, Egypt, Iraq, Oman, Morocco, and Syria. Of her role as judge, Azaizeh wrote:

My participation in evaluating the applications submitted under the Literature category offered a rare glimpse into the emerging literary and poetic voices of the Arab region. Amid their richness and diversity, one feels compelled to do justice to the writing scene even as it remains fragmented into smaller worlds across homelands and harsh exiles. The writers displayed passionate and wide-ranging concerns, expressed not only through forms and literary genres but also through themes and areas of inquiry often rooted in personal experiences and lived practices. What particularly struck me was that most of the projects were directly or indirectly connected to the political and human realities of Arab societies. Many of the projects succeeded in raising broader questions about wars, displacement, and the forms of oppression inflicted upon individuals, their heritage, language, and dreams. After careful reading and extensive discussions, the projects that earned praise and encouragement were those whose creators presented themselves and their projects with care and precision, while demonstrating deep engagement with every element of the project in ways that served the central idea and balanced passion with professionalism.

Each winning project receives up to €6,500 to support its completion.

The winners were:

Egyptian author Ahmed Nageeb, for My Father Doesn’t Smile, a “self-reflective literary work that explores manhood through the inherited silence between fathers and sons, blending confession with sarcasm. The project redefines masculinity as both fragile and brave, showing how men face love and fear with denial and isolation, as extensions of deeply rooted social inheritances.”

Omani author Amal Alsaeedi, for The Cultural History of the Grocery Store, a “reflective long-form text that weaves together autobiography and collective memory in Oman, tracing the transformation of the grocery store from a symbol of consumption into a space of fracture and confession. Through a female body burdened with heritage, and a family grief that stretches from the mountains to the sea, the text shapes a personal Omani history of loss.”

Iraqi writer Aya Mansour Hasan, for “Women of the Long River,” an “oral history project documenting women’s stories from three decades of war in Iraq (1980 to 2010), in their own voices. Dozens of testimonies; each woman has her own war and her way of crossing it. How did she negotiate it, and at what cost?”

Moroccan author Karima Ahdad, for The Partridge of the Barren Land, a novel that follows Dounia and her great-grandmother, Fatima, two women from different eras whose destinies intertwine to reflect the history and struggles of the city of Al Hoceima. It highlights education’s liberating power and women’s strength amid hardship.”

Syrian writer Kinda Youssef, for The Adventure of Ward, an illustrated poetic story in eleven chapters “that follows Ward, a brave young girl who encounters the mythical Phoenix one night. Together, they embark on a magical journey to save her dying forest and confront the mysterious ogress hiding in a cave at the top of the mountain, after she has stolen the forest’s spirit and the voices of its creatures.”

Iraqi writer Shahad Mohammed Qays, for Was a Conscript: Stories of Mandatory Military Service in Syria (2011–2024), a journalistic work that documents “the impact of compulsory military service in Syria as a collective experience that reshaped the lives of an entire generation of young men and their families, blending journalistic testimonies from former conscripts in the Syrian army with a literary narrative approach.”

You can find more about the rest of the categories at the Mawred website.