Join Fort Collins Reads in celebrating our 24th year bringing renowned authors and thought-provoking books to Fort Collins! 

We are thrilled to bring author Omar El Akkad to Fort Collins to discuss his nonfiction debut One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. His memoir dives into what it’s like to live in a Western world that doesn't always live up to its promises. The event is on November 8th, at 2pm at the Hilton Fort Collins. Doors open at 1pm. Come early for the basket raffle! The author talk will be followed by a book signing.

Tickets are available for purchase online on Eventbrite or in person at Old Firehouse Books in Old Town, Fort Collins. Avoid online fees and pick up a copy of the book (20% off discount if purchased with a ticket to the event) at the same time! Pre-signed books will also be available for purchase during the event.

ABOUT OMAR EL AKKAD

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 Pacific Northwest. He was a staff reporter for The Globe and Mail and as an award-winning journalist and author El Akkad 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, Missouri. His debut novel, American War (2017), won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, the Oregon Book Award for fiction, and the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, and has been nominated for more than ten other awards. In 2019, the BBC included American War on its list of 100 novels that shaped the world. His second novel, What Strange Paradise (2021), won the 2021 Giller Prize, the 2022 Oregon Book Award for fiction, and a 2022 Pacific Northwest Book Award. In 2025, El Akkad published his first nonfiction book, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, which won the National Book Award for nonfiction.

ABOUT THE BOOK

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • PALESTINE BOOK AWARD WINNER • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR CRITICISM • From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in a West that betrays its fundamental values. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This mixes personal stories with big-picture reflections on war, politics, and morality. Drawing on his time as a journalist covering conflicts, El Akkad talks about how people and governments often justify violence in the moment—but later act like they were against it all along. Throughout the book, he wrestles with questions about complicity, empathy, and what it means to live ethically in a world where suffering is easy to ignore. It is personal, thought-provoking, and it pushes readers to think about how they respond to injustice.

For more information on Omar El Akkad please visit www.prhspeakers.com