Jake MacDonald International Writers' Panel with Omar El Akkad and Aisha Gawad, Nov. 22nd, 7pm CST

Sun. Nov. 5, 2023

The Jake MacDonald Writer-in-Residence International Writers' Panel is set for Nov. 22, 2023 at 7pm Central. The event is open to the public and on Zoom, please register via the link below.

The event will have this year’s Jake MacDonald Writer in Residence, Omar el Akkad in conversation with noted author Aisha Abdel Gawad, whose novel, Between Two Moons, has recently been published by Penguin Random House.

Omar El Akkad is an Egyptian-Canadian journalist and novelist. A staff reporter for The Globe and Mail for 10 years, he covered the war in Afghanistan, military trials in Guantanamo Bay, and the Arab Spring In Egypt. His debut novel, American War, was published in 2017 and his second novel, What Strange Paradise, won the 2021 Giller Prize.

Aisha Abdel Gawad has been published in The Kenyon Review, American Short Fiction, and the scholarly journal The Muslim World. She won a 2015 Pushcart Prize for her short story "Waking Luna." Aisha has worked at the Arab American Association of New York, a social services agency serving the immigrant community in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. She is currently a high school English teacher in Connecticut. Between Two Moons is her first novel.