Best Portland Day Ever: Novelist Omar el Akkad
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Plotting a story, no doubt. Photo courtesy Omar el Akkad
Full disclosure — Omar el Akkad's first novel, American War, is one of my all-time favorite books.
- It's devastatingly dystopian, drawing on his time as a foreign correspondent covering both the Middle East and the United States for the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail.
I was thrilled to learn he lives near Portland when we talked shop at an Oregon Humanities Think and Drink event four years ago.
🖊️ In between his writing — he has a new short story in the literary magazine Freeman's final issue — and producing his podcast, "Without", he gets out and has fun around town.
- Here's a peek inside el Akkad's dream Portland day:
🌒 He's a night owl who would rather not do much of anything before noon, but with two young kids "mornings are a very real and very chaotic part of my life."
- For breakfast, he eats their leftovers, or if feeling "especially industrious" will make himself oatmeal — the simpler the better — "the instant kind that comes in a big cardboard tube."
🚲 On nice days, he gets his bike out, sometimes heading to the public pool in Tualatin for a swim — or something.
- "The roads where I live are incredibly hilly, and by the time I get to the pool, I can't do much more than float."
🥙 For lunch he heads to Hawthorne. "I'm a big fan of the dueling food cart pods on either side of Hawthorne and 11th, mostly so I can spend an hour walking around trying to decide what to get."
- Passing a bookstore is impossible. He always goes in. "Obviously, there's Powell's, but my other favorite indies in town include Annie Bloom's and Broadway Books."
✍🏼 Writing is an afternoon affair, in his backyard office. "It's pretty and it's quiet, except when the squirrels get into a fight on the roof or the family of deer decides to drop by."
🍝 For dinner out, the family compromises between his daughter's love of pasta and her egg allergy — usually winding up at the "most middle-of-the-road restaurants you can imagine."
🍗 "If I'm out alone ... I'm a big fan of the chicken at Casa del Pollo, the bread at Nicholas, the burger at Expatriate, the pickle soup at Otto & Anitas Schnitzelhaus."
🏋🏼 Once night falls and everyone else is in bed, el Akkad hits the gym — a straightforward SE spot. "No staff, no weird spa stuff. I tend to go there around two or three in the morning and I almost always have the place to myself."
- Afterward, he might hit the Pix dessert vending machine.
- As long as you're sticking to desserts (the machines also sell canned fish): "You really can't go wrong with anything in there."