Mohamed Hassan

Mohamed Hassan is an award-winning poet, journalist, podcaster and producer from Auckland and Cairo.

In 2013 he won the Rising Voices Youth Poetry Slam and the National Poetry Slam in 2015, representing New Zealand at the Individual World Poetry Slam held in Arizona in 2016.

His first collection of poetry A Felling Of Things was released in 2016, and his next collection, National Anthem, was published by Dead Bird Books in 2020 and longlisted for the Ockham National Book Awards in 2021.

Hassan's poems have been shared widely online, and are taught in hundreds of schools internationally. He has toured his work across New Zealand, Australia, the US and UK, at TEDx and at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, and he represented NZ at the Individual World Poetry Slam in 2016.

As a journalist, Mohamed covered ethnic affairs for RNZ, investigating counterterrorism, workplace discrimination and Islamophobia. In 2017 he was awarded the Gold Trophy at the New York Radio Awards for his podcast series Public Enemy on the impacts of social and security policies on Muslim communities in New Zealand, Australia and the United States. His 2020 series The Guest House tackled community grief following the Christchurch terror attacks.

In May 2022, his book How To Be A Bad Muslim and Other Essays was published by Penguin Books New Zealand. Described as funny, elegiac and chilling, in this collection Hassan blends storytelling, memoir and non-fiction to map the experience of being Muslim in the 21st century.