Wilton Library announced Thursday, April 15, it has selected Aisha Abdel Gawad as the inaugural Cornerstone Writer-in-Residence. The Cornerstone Writer-in-Residence program was created this year to provide an emerging or mid-career writer with financial support and office space to complete one manuscript within a 12-month period.
Abdel Gawad is a writer and teacher. Her debut novel, Between Two Moons, is the recipient of a New York City Book Award, a finalist for the Gotham Book Prize, and was longlisted for the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and the 2023 New American Voices Award. Her short fiction and essays have been published in places such as The Kenyon Review, Bon Appetit, Literary Hub, American Short Fiction, and The Muslim World. She teaches high school English at Greenwich Academy.
“Aisha Abdel Gawad immediately stood out as a talented and accomplished writer whose proposal for a literary work clearly builds upon the library’s mission to inform, enrich, connect, and inspire our community,” Wilton Library Executive Director Caroline Mandler said. “We are delighted to welcome her as our first Cornerstone Writer-in-Residence, and we look forward to working with her to craft library programs that will engage our entire community.”
The Cornerstone Writer-in-Residence program, generously funded by the Wilton Library Endowment Fund, was launched in February 2024. Abdel Gawad was selected by a committee that included representatives from the library staff, Board of Trustees, and contributors to the Endowment Fund, as well as authors and publishers. The pool of applicants featured more than 100 writers from 23 states from a wide variety of literary genres, including fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, and screenwriting.
Abdel Gawad will be working on a new novel set in 1930s-1950s Cairo during the “golden age” of Egyptian performing arts.
“The main character is a singer who grows up in a rural village and finds sudden fame in the big city. The novel toggles between her public life, where she is an increasingly sought-after star, and her private life, where she wrestles with ways to assert her creative autonomy in a male-dominated industry. In a world where everyone is trying to use her or control her, it is a story of how this star uses her talents as an artist to redefine the scope of a woman’s power in Egypt,” Abdel Gawad said.
In addition to completing her manuscript, Abdel Gawad will lead a series of library programs for all ages and offer outreach visits to Wilton schools during her residency. For more information about the Cornerstone Writer-in-Residence Program, visit the Wilton Library website.