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Fiction Editors

John Lewis

John is a writer and editor who makes a living as a Private Investigator. He has investigated false convictions, wrongful deaths, and has been a capital defender for well over a dozen years. John has experience successfully helping authors develop and prepare their book-length manuscripts for pitching and querying, leading to publication. His own creative writing has appeared in the Portland Mercury and The Trentin Paisley Press. His work has also been produced by the Northwest Playwright Guild in their 10 Minute Play series. All of these media groups no longer exist through no fault of John’s, but it makes him wonder sometimes.

Matthew J. Hefti

Matthew J. Hefti is the author of A Hard and Heavy Thing (Gallery / Simon & Schuster 2016), which was named to Booklist's Top Ten Debut Novels of 2016 and Military Times Top Ten Novels of the Year. A Hard and Heavy Thing was also awarded the Wisconsin Library Association's Outstanding Achievement Recognition, and it was selected by the Women's National Book Association as a Great Group Read for National Book Club Month in 2016. Matthew's work has appeared in print in anthologies such as The Road Ahead: Fiction from the Forever War (Pegasus Books 2017), Retire the Colors (Hudson Whitman 2016), MFA vs. NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2014) and others. His literary criticism and cultural and personal essays have appeared at Literary Hub and Electric Literature, among many others. Matthew is a fiction and poetry editor for the Wrath-Bearing Tree. He spent 12 years as an explosive ordnance disposal technician, deploying twice to Iraq and twice to Afghanistan. While enlisted, he earned a BA in English and an MFA in Creative Writing. After he left the military, he got his JD from the University of Wisconsin Law School. He lives with his family in Houston, Texas.

Adrian Bonenberger

Adrian Bonenberger is a writer. He published his war memoirs, Afghan Post, through The Head and The Hand Press.

Matt Jones

Matt Jones is a poet, novelist, storyteller and veteran who has published in Arc, F(r)iction, and many other places. Today, Matt writes and teaches in Paris: leadership at the École militaire and creative writing at SciencesPo. He also co-hosts the by-donation WriteTime workshop, and organizes a club for fitness enthusiasts who use trees as barbells: the Log Club.

Poetry Editors

Amalie Flynn

Amalie Flynn is a poet and the author of FLESH (Alien Buddha Press, 2023), SEPTEMBER ELEVENTH (Middle West Press, 2021), WIFE AND WAR: THE MEMOIR (2013) and a collection of poetry blogs: SEPTEMBER ELEVENTH, WIFE AND WAR, THE SUSTAINABILITY OF US, BORDER OF HEARTBREAK, and NOT YOURS TO DESTROY. Flynn’s writing has appeared in THE THINGS WE CARRY STILL, AMERICAN BOOK REVIEW, BEYOND THEIR LIMITS OF LONGING, THE NEW YORK TIMES, TIME, and THE HUFFINGTON POST and has received mention from THE NEW YORK TIMES and CNN. Flynn has a BA in English/Studio Arts, an MFA in Creative Writing, and a PhD in Humanities. Flynn lives in Rhode Island with her husband and their two children.

Drew Pham

Drew Pham is a queer, transgender writer of Vietnamese heritage. A child of war refugees, her work centers on legacies of violence in times of conflict. She has published in Blunderbuss Magazine, McSweeny's, Slice Magazine, Foreign Policy, Time Magazine, The Daily Beast, and Columbia Journal, among others. She lives with her two cats in Brooklyn, NY, and serves as an adjunct English lecturer at CUNY Brooklyn College.

Matthew J. Hefti

Matthew J. Hefti is the author of A Hard and Heavy Thing (Gallery / Simon & Schuster 2016), which was named to Booklist's Top Ten Debut Novels of 2016 and Military Times Top Ten Novels of the Year. A Hard and Heavy Thing was also awarded the Wisconsin Library Association's Outstanding Achievement Recognition, and it was selected by the Women's National Book Association as a Great Group Read for National Book Club Month in 2016. Matthew's work has appeared in print in anthologies such as The Road Ahead: Fiction from the Forever War (Pegasus Books 2017), Retire the Colors (Hudson Whitman 2016), MFA vs. NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2014) and others. His literary criticism and cultural and personal essays have appeared at Literary Hub and Electric Literature, among many others. Matthew is a fiction and poetry editor for the Wrath-Bearing Tree. He spent 12 years as an explosive ordnance disposal technician, deploying twice to Iraq and twice to Afghanistan. While enlisted, he earned a BA in English and an MFA in Creative Writing. After he left the military, he got his JD from the University of Wisconsin Law School. He lives with his family in Houston, Texas.

Nonfiction Editors

Michael Carson

Michael Carson served in the U.S. Army Infantry from 2005 to 2009. He studied history and fiction in New England and now lives on the Texas Gulf Coast.

David James

David James served as a Fire Support Officer in the 173d Airborne in Afghanistan from 2005-2006 and 2007-2008. He now teaches History in Italy where he lives with his wife and twin daughters. His hobbies include reading, writing, and rock climbing. He agrees with Borges that "reading is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual".

Rachel Kambury

Rachel Kambury is a writer, editor, and publishing professional specializing in war and military literature and history. She earned a BA in literature from Eugene Lang College in 2013 and studied war history at the American University of Paris. She lives and works in New York City.

Lauren Kay Johnson

Lauren Kay Johnson is a former military public affairs officer and Afghanistan veteran. Her memoir, The Fine Art of Camouflage, chronicles her coming-of-age against the backdrop of war—beginning with her mother's Army career and deployment in support of Operation Desert Storm when Lauren was seven years old, and later with her own service. Lauren's essays, fiction, and poetry have appeared in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Glamour, Yale Medicine Magazine, CONSEQUENCE magazine, Drunken Boat, Pleiades, and several anthologies. Her writing and interviews have been used in the creation of dance and theater productions, and she has lectured at schools, conferences, and veteran centers across the country, including the Association of Writers and Writing Programs national conference, the Boston Book Festival, and the University of Iowa. She is a writing consultant with GrubStreet, an editor at the Wrath-Bearing Tree, and a former editor-in-chief of Redivider. Lauren lives with her husband and twin daughters outside Seattle. By day, she is a Program Director at IGNITE Worldwide, a non-profit that aims to combat the gender imbalance in STEM fields. By night, she writes (with the help of her fat tabby cat) and eats copious amounts of ice cream.

Board of Directors

Jennifer Orth-Veillon

Jennifer A. Orth-Veillon, who holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Emory University, curates the WWrite blog from the perspective of a writer, scholar, teacher, and French-English translator specializing in the literature of war and the experience of the American veteran. She has led writing workshops for veterans on university campuses and has taught over twenty courses on different modes and mediums for war veteran memoirs. For two summers she served as a teaching assistant to Dr. Mark Facknitz's James Madison University's summer abroad program on the Great War and modern memory, which took place at various WWI memorial sites in France, Belgium, and England. In her writing and research, she seeks to understand the complexity of war through its shifting place in cultural memory and history.

Matthew J. Hefti

Matthew J. Hefti is the author of A Hard and Heavy Thing (Gallery / Simon & Schuster 2016), which was named to Booklist's Top Ten Debut Novels of 2016 and Military Times Top Ten Novels of the Year. A Hard and Heavy Thing was also awarded the Wisconsin Library Association's Outstanding Achievement Recognition, and it was selected by the Women's National Book Association as a Great Group Read for National Book Club Month in 2016. Matthew's work has appeared in print in anthologies such as The Road Ahead: Fiction from the Forever War (Pegasus Books 2017), Retire the Colors (Hudson Whitman 2016), MFA vs. NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2014) and others. His literary criticism and cultural and personal essays have appeared at Literary Hub and Electric Literature, among many others. Matthew is a fiction and poetry editor for the Wrath-Bearing Tree. He spent 12 years as an explosive ordnance disposal technician, deploying twice to Iraq and twice to Afghanistan. While enlisted, he earned a BA in English and an MFA in Creative Writing. After he left the military, he got his JD from the University of Wisconsin Law School. He lives with his family in Houston, Texas.

Ben LeRoy

Ben LeRoy is the founder and publisher of the critically acclaimed publishing companies Bleak House Books (2000-2009) and Tyrus Books (2009-2017). Ben works as a freelance editor, helping authors identify the story they intend to tell and how to best tell it. In 2014, after the suicide death of a friend, Ben did volunteer work in all 50 states as part of the Be Local Everywhere project. In addition to his role on the board of Wrath-Bearing Tree, Ben serves on the board of Common Wealth Development. He lives in Madison, WI.

Michael Carson

Michael Carson served in the U.S. Army Infantry from 2005 to 2009. He studied history and fiction in New England and now lives on the Texas Gulf Coast.

Adrian Bonenberger

Adrian Bonenberger is a writer. He published his war memoirs, Afghan Post, through The Head and The Hand Press.

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