OCC Multicultural Center Will Welcome Bill Campbell, Author of “The Day the Klan Came to Town”

Orange Coast College’s Multicultural Center and International Multicultural Committee have invited author Bill Campbell for a virtual dialogue about his latest graphic novel, “The Day the Klan Came to Town.” The interview will take place via Zoom HERE by former OCC adjunct instructor Rachelle Cruz on Tuesday, Oct. 5 at 7 p.m. 

“The Day the Klan Came to Town” is a fictionalized retelling based on historical events in 1923 during which the Ku Klux Klan attacked Jewish, Catholic, Black, and southern and eastern European immigrant communities of Carnegie, Pennsylvania. The story, which focuses on a Sicilian immigrant named Primo Salerno, explains how townspeople rose up to send the Klan packing. 

Campbell also is the author of “Sunshine Patriots, My Booty Novel,” and the anti-racism satire, “Koontown Killing Kaper.” Along with Edward Austin Hall, he co-edited the groundbreaking anthology, “Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond.” He also co-edited “Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany” with Nisi Shawl, “Future Fiction: New Dimensions in International Science Fiction and Fantasy” with Francesco Verso, and “APB: Artists against Police Brutality” with Jason Rodriguez and John Jennings (for which he was awarded the Glyph Pioneer/Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the field of Black Comix). 

“The Day the Klan Came to Town” was released by PM Press in 2021. Campbell recently received the 2021 Locus Special Award for amplifying diverse voices in science fiction. 

Cruz currently is a professor at Western Colorado University in the Creative Writing Program in Genre Fiction. She is the author of “God's Will for Monsters” (Inlandia, 2017), which won an American Book Award in 2018 and the 2016 Hillary Gravendyk Regional Poetry Prize. She co-edited “Kuwento: Lost Things, an anthology of Philippine Myths” (Carayan Press, 2015) with Lis P. Sipin-Gabon. Her most recent book, “Experiencing Comics: An Introduction to Reading, Discussing and Creating Comics,” was published in Fall 2018 while she was still teaching classes at OCC. She was appointed the 2018-2020 Inlandia Literary Laureate during which she founded a summer writing program for young people, Poetry is Power, among other community projects.