Distinguished Visiting Writers Series

The Distinguished Visiting Writers Series brings writers to campus to offer a reading and teach an advanced class that offers IC students in the Visiting Writers Workshop the unique opportunity to learn from some of country's foremost writers. All readings are open to the public.

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. 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, American War, is an international bestseller and has been translated into thirteen languages. It won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award, the Oregon Book Award for fiction, among others. It was listed as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times. His new nonfiction book, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, won the Palestine Book Award and the National Book Award. Omar lives near Portland, Oregon, where is on the faculty of the Pacific University MFA in Writing program.

Anelise Chen is the author of the novel So Many Olympic Exertions, a finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. She is a 5 Under 35 Honoree from the National Book Foundation. Her second book, Clam Down: A Metamorphosis , published June 2025, is a hybrid memoir about a woman who turns into a clam after the dissolution of her marriage. It was a NYTimes Editors’ Pick and named one of the best books of the year by Vulture, Chicago Tribune, and Electric Lit. It was also a 2026 Pulitzer Finalist. Chen is currently an associate professor of creative writing at Columbia University. She lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with her family.