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Yumna Kassab Yumna Kassab i(10509602 works by)
Gender: Female
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BiographyHistory

Writer from Western Sydney.

Yumna Kassab was born and raised in western Sydney, and completed her schooling in Parramatta, excluding two years in Lebanon with her family. She has studied medical science at Macquarie University and neuroscience at Sydney University. In 2020, when her debut collection was longlisted for the Stella Prize, she was teaching in regional New South Wales.

Most Referenced Works

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon The House of Youssef Newcastle : Giramondo Publishing , 2019 17275284 2019 selected work short story

'The House of Youssef is a collection of short stories set in Western Sydney. The stories explore the lives of Lebanese migrants who have settled in the area, circling around themes of isolation, family and community, and nostalgia for the home country. In particular, House of Youssef is about relationships, and the customs which complicate them: between parents and children, the dark secrets of marriage, the breakable bonds between friends. The stories are told with extreme minimalism — some are only two pages long — which heightens their emotional intensity.

'The collection is framed by two soliloquies. The first expresses the longing of an old man for the homeland he will never return to. The second is the monologue of a woman, who could be his wife, addressed to her daughter, about life and its disappointments. The two central sequences are composed of vignettes which focus on moments of domestic crisis, and which combine, in the title sequence, to chart the demise of a single family. Kassab portrays the lives of ordinary people — simple, unglamorous, down-to-earth. Her understated style isolates small details and the anxieties that lurk within them. The tiny shifts in a normal day are an entire world to the people at the centre of her stories.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

2020 shortlisted Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction
2020 shortlisted Queensland Literary Awards Australian Short Story Collection - Steele Rudd Award
2020 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Glenda Adams Award for New Writing
2020 longlisted The Stella Prize
2020 shortlisted Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Fiction
Last amended 30 Jun 2020 12:08:48
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