Best-selling author, journalist Wil Haygood to appear at Columbus State March 26

Campus News | Monday, March 9, 2026

Award-winning author and journalist Wil Haygood will speak on the Columbus State Community College campus about his new book, “The War Within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home.” Published by Knopf, the book was released on Feb. 10. 

This will be Columbus native Haygood’s fourth visit to the Columbus Campus. He was a featured speaker in 2013 during the college’s 50th anniversary celebration. He appeared again in 2015 and 2018 to discuss his newly released books in those years. 

His latest non-fiction project draws on the lives of soldiers and officers, doctors and nurses, journalists and activists, artists and politicians. Haygood illuminates a generation caught between two battles: one on the front lines in Vietnam and another for justice and dignity in America.

"In these masterful pages, Haygood reframes both the Vietnam War and the United States’ unfinished struggle for equality."—Mitchell Zuckoff, New York Times bestselling author of 13 Hours and Lost in Shangri-La.

Haygood is a Visiting Distinguished Professor at Miami University. His career as a journalist included positions with The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. As an author, he has penned several biographies, including the best-seller The Butler: A Witness to History, which was turned into a prize-winning motion picture starring Academy Award winners Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, Jane Fonda, and Cuba Gooding Jr.

Haygood will appear on Thursday, March 26, from 1 to 3 p.m. in the Mitchell Hall Event Center, 250 Cleveland Ave., Columbus. The event is free to the public. Hard copies of the book will be available for purchase.                                                    

Use this Eventbrite link to register.

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