UAH Humanities Center welcomes award-winning journalist Omar El Akkad

The UAH Humanities Center welcomes Omar El Akkad, award-winning author of American War.

The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) Humanities Center welcomes award-winning journalist Omar El Akkad visiting eminent scholar to campus Nov. 13-15.

On Thursday, Nov. 14, Akkad will give a public talk at 4 p.m., in the Wilson Hall Theatre Auditorium on the UAH campus (Ben Graves Drive).

"I’m very pleased to welcome to UAH Omar El Akkad, an award-winning journalist and best-selling novelist whose work in either aspect illuminates and intervenes in some of the most urgent social and political dilemmas of our present global reality," said Dr. Eric D. Smith, Professor, Department of English, and Director, UAH Humanities Center.

Akkad, an Egyptian-Canadian international novelist has traveled around the world to cover many of the most important news stories of the last decade. His reporting includes dispatches from the NATO-led war in Afghanistan, the military trials in Guantanamo Bay, the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt, and the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson, MI.

A gifted speaker, El Akkad draws on his breadth of experience as a journalist at home and abroad to give his audience rare insights into the most important topics of our time, from terrorism to populist movements to racial tensions in America, and talks about how global politics informed and inspired his debut novel. His book, American War: A Novel is an international bestseller and has been translated into 13 languages.

El Akkad received Canada’s National Newspaper Award for investigative reporting and the Goff Penny Memorial Prize for Young Canadian Journalists, as well as three National Magazine Award honorable mentions. He lives in Portland, OR.