Omar El Akkad

Portland

Writer at Freelance

Host at Without

I write for a living. My literary agent is Nicole Aragi of @AragiAuthors. My film/TV agent is Michelle Kroes of CAA.

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Articles

Award-winning Brisbane musician accused of antisemitic acceptance speech

3 weeks ago | independentaustralia.net | Rosemary Sorensen |Omar El Akkad

Creative artists who platform against genocide should be applauded, not vilified, writes Rosemary Sorensen. IS IT BRAVE TO DO what Brisbane jazz musician Kellee Green did — naming her piano composition ‘River to Sea’ and urging people in her winner's speech at the Queensland Music Awards (QMA) to boycott Israel-connected businesses?
KING OF THE NORTH

1 month ago | kirkusreviews.com | Jeanne Theoharis |Omar El Akkad |Alok Vaid-Menon

A powerful must-read that sheds new light on King and the Civil Rights Movement. For decades, biographers have focused on Martin Luther King Jr.’s successful leadership in the South while suggesting that his Northern activism failed because it lacked direction and local support.
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

1 month ago | washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com | Omar El Akkad

Every time I review a book, I ask myself, “Who is this for?” I first wrap my head around its intended audience, and then I can assess how well the book did what it wanted to do. As I got into Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This — savoring his gorgeous prose as if each utterance was a delicacy of words, feeling each page as one might feel any other painful thing one needs — it occurred to me: This book is for me.
THE SOCIAL GENOME

1 month ago | kirkusreviews.com | Dalton Conley |Omar El Akkad |Walter Isaacson

The latest on nature versus nurture may unsettle readers at the extremes but will entertain them all. Figuring out who we are—and who we will become. Belief in the superiority of people like you can be deeply satisfying. Nazism gave that a bad reputation, but it revived with the 1994 bestseller The Bell Curve, whose authors maintained that people achieve if they inherit abilities that nonachievers and minorities lack.
WHO IS GOVERNMENT?

1 month ago | kirkusreviews.com | Michael Lewis |Omar El Akkad |Alok Vaid-Menon

Compelling arguments against ideologues bent on dismantling the government. Deep state, shmeep state: a spirited rebuttal to the canard that federal civil servants are nest-featherers up to no good. “The fact is that federal employees go to work every day with the explicit job description of making the lives of everyday Americans better.” So writes W.
RED SCARE | Kirkus Reviews

1 month ago | kirkusreviews.com | Clay Risen |David Grann |Omar El Akkad

An exemplary work of political and cultural history that invites a gimlet-eyed look at our own time. A sweeping history of the campaign to suppress liberal dissent via blacklisting and harassment. As Risen, whose histories have ranged from whiskey to the Rough Riders, writes, “There is a lineage to the American hard right of today” in the Red Scare of old. In fear that communists were everywhere in American society, police agencies went overboard to prove it, usually to no effect.
COVID WARS | Kirkus Reviews

1 month ago | kirkusreviews.com | Omar El Akkad |Amy Tan

A Covid-19 reference as comprehensive as it is devastating. Gruner presents an overview of the Covid-19 pandemic in America that also looks at global, historical, and political complexities to add context to the crisis. Even before the coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China in 2019, American leaders like presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama had anticipated the possibility of a global outbreak—their preparations and warnings were largely disregarded by the Trump administration, per the author.
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

1 month ago | culturevulture.net | Omar El Akkad |Lewis Whittington

“One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This was a tweet sent out by journalist Omar El Akkad reporting from Gaza last year – a prediction that was viewed 10 million+ times.
What Happens When a Drone Strike Has No Killer and a War Has No Dead?

1 month ago | thewalrus.ca | Omar El Akkad

L anguage is never sufficient. There is not enough of it to make a true mirror of living. In this way, the soothing or afflictive effect of the stories we tell is not in whether we select the right words but in our proximity to what the right words might be. This is not some abstraction but a very real expression of power—the privilege of describing a thing vaguely, incompletely, dishonestly is inseparable from the privilege of looking away.
New on Bulaq: ‘One Day,’ with Omar El Akkad

1 month ago | arablit.org | Omar El Akkad

Interviews Bulaq, Omar El Akkad, podcast Novelist and former journalist Omar El Akkad talks about his book One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This – a blend of memoir, social criticism, and moral philosophy.