Welcome! To mark the publication of my first eBook, Finding Jamilah, I’ve started up this blog. Figuring out how to use it well is another story!
I wrote Finding Jamilah during the last few months during my (almost) two-year stay in Jordan. Being so far away from my friends and family made me long for home, hence the impetus behind my story. For nearly two years, I was an Aussie Muslim woman, born in Singapore, living in a sea of Western foreigners, in the middle of the Arabian desert! Fun times, fun times.
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Remember that kid in high school who always said she was writing a novel? And then life happened, and dusty manuscripts piled up in different computers? Well, that was me. Through the mercy of God and amazing friends who have been relentless in their support, my book is finally up, and I can look back and feel so relieved that hey, I actually did it 🙂 Like many other writers, I have an embarrassing amount of half-finished stories that haven’t seen the light of day, so I’m thrilled that Finding Jamilah made it out into the big wide world.
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Published by Raidah Shah Idil
Raidah Shah Idil is a student counsellor, poet, writer, and creative instructor with a passion for YA (young adult), fantasy, sci-fi and detective fiction. She was born in Singapore and moved to Australia at the age of 12. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (English) and Bachelor of Science (Psychology) from the University of New South Wales in 2005.
After working as a marketing copywriter and studying the Islamic Sciences in Amman, Jordan for nearly two years, she returned to Sydney, got married, then moved to Malaysia. While working as a part-time tutor at Axiom Learning, she works as an online counsellor for Seekershub Global. She has completed her Diploma of Counselling through the Australian Institute of Professional Counsellors. Her full-time job is raising her baby daughter. Everything else is squeezed in between. Literally. Her writing has been published in The Feminist Wire, SISTERS magazine, Daily Life, Lip Mag and Venture Beat. Raidah’s poetry was recently published in the ‘Armed With Only Our Souls’ online DDFS chapbook by New York poet Caits Meissner. Her debut double-featured novel, “Finding Jamilah and the Story of Yusuf” was published by MyLegacy publications in early 2014.
In her spare time (ha), she reads, listens to audiobooks, goes on walks, and is always on the lookout for tasty noodle soup. She currently lives in a green, leafy suburb in Kuala Lumpur with her husband, three small children and mother-in-law.
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Raidah Shah Idil 
Congrats Raidah- really proud of you sis- only bigger and brighter things to come iA 🙂 looking forward to reading more of your blog (and stories, of course)!
Thanks so much Bushra! I’ll be updating soon inshaAllah!
You are inspiration Raidah 🙂 I have enjoyed reading your blog so please keep updating, I will defo buying your book, I KNOW it will be a brilliant read.
Take care. Farat xx