Art Beat Q&A: Literature becomes a bridge in Caleb Powell and Sana Nasim’s ‘Surfing in Pakistan’

Caleb Powell has lived in Edmonds since 2012, but the story behind his latest book begins on the other side of the world. 

A Spanish teacher at Edmonds-Woodway High School and a long-time girls basketball coach, Powell is the author of Surfing in Pakistan, a nonfiction collaboration with Pakistani artist and polio survivor Sana Nasim. Released in February 2026 by Paper Angel Press, the book was a finalist in the Faulkner/Wisdom Competition for Nonfiction.

Nasim discovered Powell through The Express Tribune, a Pakistani English-language newspaper and partner of The International New York Times. And on Dec. 25, 2015, she sent him a direct message with a question for her blog, “What to think about love, care and happiness? How can love, care and happiness be promoted? One message for peace,” sparking the beginning of what would become an online collaboration based on a mutual love for languages, storytelling and the search for truth.

Nasim wanted to improve her English and asked, “Suggest to me some books I should read.” Powell, in turn, mailed Nasim books like To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham and Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. 

“I’ll mail them,” Powell told her. “Physical books have value as art, as objects.” 

Q&A

NG: After reading your essay online, which captures the initial conversation between you and Sana Nasim and eventually became the foundation for your book, I’m curious: Why is it called Surfing in Pakistan?

CP: Basically, the Internet plays a huge role. We met online, and most of my research for the book happened online. When I was blogging for The Express Tribune, she found me online, and we communicated that way for years. She spends much of her time on the computer, surfing, connecting with people and learning about the world. That contact, in essence, is surfing.

NG: And is that her artwork on the book cover?

CP: Yes, Sana’s art on the cover is the painting underneath the arch, and the book includes several more of her paintings. They appear in color in the Kindle edition.

NG: So, what began as a few questions online in December 2015 slowly turned into years of conversation and connection, and eventually writing a book together. When did you realize this exchange with Nasim was becoming something larger than just correspondence?

CP: Probably three to four months in, sharing books and learning languages.

NG: Early on, you made a decision to frame the relationship as mutual learning – that you would help Nasim with her English while she helped you understand life with polio and her life in Sialkot, Pakistan. How was that important to you as both a teacher and a writer?

CP: I’m very curious about people who don’t have a voice. I was fascinated because I lived overseas for eight years, and I think we don’t have much of a connection with the way people really live. I believe that one day we’ll all have a culture with a common thread. Our cultures are different, but there are commonalities.

NG: Where did you live for eight years?

CP: South Korea, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates, Brazil and Argentina.

NG: You traveled quite a bit. Were you teaching English?

CP: About six years after I graduated from college, I started teaching English, and this lasted for eight years. I would say two of those years I was traveling. I went to Korea first, when I was 28, and then got interested in foreign languages and traveling. I studied Chinese characters, then went to South America to learn Spanish and Portuguese. Since then, I’ve studied quite a bit. I’m currently a Spanish teacher as a long-term substitute, and this is my third consecutive year teaching Spanish.

NG: You’ve written about how language carries different cultural and historical weight. How did your interest in sociolinguistics shape the way you approached telling Nasim’s story in English?

CP: Language gives hope we can communicate. If you can’t connect and understand that there are so many ways of saying the same thing, you miss something. Language should connect us. I wanted to push that idea forward and use it as a positive.

NG: When you were telling her story in English, did you have to think about how to express it while staying true to how she was expressing it?

CP: I was always checking: Is this what you really mean to say? I tried to whittle that down because too much of it becomes a fallacy of imitative form. I wanted to take a lot of that out but keep the spirit of what she was communicating.

NG: In a time of political and cultural division, you and Nasim stayed in the conversation with curiosity and without judgment. What kind of connection did that create, and how do you hope readers carry that forward?

CP: There’s tension between the West and the East – religion, nonreligion, the United States, which offers great things and horrible things at the same time. If we attempt to understand people on the ground, most of them are just like us. The wider issues are filtered through very personal things – Sana trying to be an artist, struggling with polio, feeling like an outsider in Pakistan. That can happen anywhere. Literature has given me this, and I hope readers come away understanding that you can’t judge without first trying to understand someone else.

For Powell, Surfing in Pakistan offers a universal understanding: Literature makes room for empathy, and it begins with the willingness to stay in the conversation.

Surfing in Pakistan is available for order at the Edmonds Bookshop and other book venues.