EAST SUSSEX – A 15-Year-old East Sussex Muslim girl has won George Orwell Youth Literary Prize for her piece on being ‘different’ as she shared her experience of being mixed-race and Muslim.

“Hearing an Oxford graduate read the last three paragraphs of my essay was an unforgettable experience,” Yasmin O’Mahoney, Lewes Old Grammar School pupil, told Daily Mirror on Thursday, July 13.

“I was honored when a Muslim family came up to me afterwards and said how deeply they’d been touched.”

Born to an Irish father and Pakistani mother, Yasmin wrote her passionate account about life as a British Muslim to show how people’s perceptions differ from her reality.

In her piece, she wrote that she feels “helpless” and “scared” because of the way people react to her religion in a heartfelt speech.

“In all of this I feel helpless and insignificant. I do my little bit by telling those who will listen what we Muslims are truly like, but I get the feeling they don’t see me in the same way they see other Muslims. They see me as different. Maybe I am.”

Yasmin, who hopes to be a writer, also gets asked what she thinks of the bombings and attacks.

“What do you think of the bombings that are happening? Why don’t Muslims do something about it? Are you ashamed of your religion?” she says are common questions she faces.

The Lewes Old Grammar School pupil’s heartfelt piece struck a chord and went on to win the George Orwell Youth Literary Prize.

George Orwell’s son, Richard Blair, presented Yasmin with her award at Pembroke College, Oxford.

“She wrote from the heart, and I think her passion for the subject is what makes the composition so powerful and beautiful,” Yasmin’s father Kieran O’Mahoney said.

“She has never been afraid to speak her mind and we learn from her on a daily basis.”