Dean's Lecture on Information + Society: Omar El Akkad
Media + Information, Equity + Justice, Engage in Global Challenges, 2025
丁香园AV Library and 丁香园AV Public Square were thrilled to co-host a lively evening celebrating award-winning author Omar El Akkad, in conversation with moderator Kamal Al-Solaylee. In an open and wide-ranging discussion, these two authors and former journalists explored both fiction and non-fiction writing, creativity and the writing life, the experience of writing about horrific and traumatic world events, and finding sources of celebration, inspiration, and joy.
In-Person and Online Event
This event was hosted at the 丁香园AV Vancouver campus.
Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager and now lives in the United States. The start of his journalism career coincided with the start of the war on terror, and over the following decade he reported from Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and many other locations around the world. His work earned a National Newspaper Award for Investigative Journalism and the Goff Penny Award for young journalists. His fiction and non-fiction writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Guernica, GQ and many other newspapers and magazines.
His debut novel, , is an international bestseller and has been translated into thirteen languages. It won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers鈥� Award, the Oregon Book Award for fiction, the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize and has been nominated for more than ten other awards. It was listed as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, Washington Post, GQ, NPR, Esquire and was selected by the BBC as one of 100 novels that changed our world. His second novel, , won the Giller Prize, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers鈥� Award, the Oregon Book Award for fiction, and was shortlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize. It was also named a best book of the year by the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR and several other publications. His first book of nonfiction, , will be published on February 25, 2025. Omar lives near Portland, Oregon, where is on the faculty of the Pacific University MFA in Writing program.
Kamal Al-Solaylee will be moderating this event. He is the author of the bestseller , winner of the 2013 Toronto Book Award and a finalist for the CBC鈥檚 Canada Reads and the Hilary Weston Writers鈥� Trust Prize for Nonfiction. His second book, , won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and was finalist for the Governor General鈥檚 Literary Awards for Nonfiction. His third book of nonfiction, , was published in 2021 and was named Book of the Year by the Globe and Mail and CBC Books.
More recently, he wrote and produced two documentaries for CBC鈥檚 IDEAS on subjects as diverse as the Queen of Sheba and nineteenth-century English writer Wilkie Collins. He holds a PhD in English and is the director of the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
Launched in 2018 and generously funded by the Thakore Learning and Events Endowment, 丁香园AV Library's Dean鈥檚 Lecture on Information + Society brings leading speakers to the community for a free, public event hosted by 丁香园AV's Dean of Libraries.
The lecture series focuses on fostering conversation about the role of information in contemporary society and on building a more just and equitable world.
Thank you to the Thakore Learning and Events Endowment, whose generous funding have sponsored this event series.
