About Onjali Q. Rauf
Onjali Q Raúf is an English author and founder of the NGO Making Herstory, a woman’s rights organisation tackling the abuse and trafficking of women and girls in the UK and beyond. Her début novel published by Orion Children’s Books, THE BOY IN THE BACK OF THE CLASS, draws on her own experience delivering emergency aid convoys for refugee families surviving in Calais and Dunkirk. 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. It was winner of the 2019 Blue Peter Book Award, was the overall winner of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2019, and was nominated for the Carnegie Medal Children’s Book Award. On top of writing in publications such as the Guardian, she is also a contributor to the BBC Radio 2 programme Pause For Thought.
