St Andrews Author and Reader Shortlisted for Major Literary Award
Award-winning author Dina Nayeri, Reader in Creative Writing in the School of English at the University of St Andrews, is a finalist in the non-fiction category of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
Dina’s critically acclaimed book Who Gets Believed? When the Truth isn’t Enough was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award earlier this year.
The book draws attention to the ways refugees and other vulnerable people are routinely doubted and dismissed, and touches on her own experience as a refugee. Who Gets Believed? expands on themes in Dina’s last book The Ungrateful Refugee (now taught in schools around the world), and is deeply personal, reflecting on morals, languages, history, compassion, and the unspoken social codes that determine how we relate to one another.
Dina said: “I’ve always looked to the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for well-crafted books that will challenge and inform me about our world. The prize has such an amazing history. I’m very proud.”
The Dayton Literary Peace Prize is a major international award recognising the power of the written word to promote peace, and invites nominations in adult fiction and nonfiction books, published within the last year, that have lead readers to a better understanding of other cultures, peoples, religions, and political points of view. Both awards carry a $10,000 prize.
Dina was born during the Iranian revolution and lived as a refugee for two years before being granted asylum in the United States. In 2021, Dina joined the School of English in Creative Writing.
Much of Dina’s writing focuses on the experiences of refugees and displaced people. The Ungrateful Refugee (2017) won the Geschwister Scholl Preis and finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Kirkus Prize, and Elle Grand Prix des Lectrices, and was called by The Observer “a work of astonishing, insistent importance.” Last year, The Guardian called her “a master storyteller of the refugee experience.”
Dina’s book of writing and photography for children, The Waiting Place: When Home is Lost and a New One Not Yet Found was published in May 2022. Schools across the country were given free copies as part of a campaign, funded by the Tay Charitable Trust, that saw Dina visit schools around Scotland, sharing key messages from the book and encouraging children to think about and discuss complex topics such as displacement and the refugee crisis, as well as more fundamental ideas including welcome, empathy, and home.