Reprinted with permission from Atria Books. Mia Tucker woke before the alarm. She usually did on weekdays. She was a …
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Archives
New Fiction Review: Matthew Komatsu On Matt Gallagher’s ‘Empire City’
As Avengers was wrapping up last year, I mentioned how excited I was to see the finale to a friend, who responded wit…
New Nonfiction from Charles Stromme: “The Army Profoundly Regrets”
1972 I was back from a year of flying helicopters in Vietnam. The Army gave me a make-work job at Ft. Riley, Kansas, …
Hostile Threat Detected: Adrian Bonenberger Reviews Joe Pan’s “Operating Systems”
Joe Pan popped up on many veteran writers’ radars in 2014. He had recently written the first great poem about what le…
Three Poems from Suzanne Rancourt
The Shoes That Bore Us It is a dream of kind slippers that coddle bunions appeasedby hands mittened as the same kind …
New fiction from Taylor Brown: Excerpt, ‘Pride of Eden’
The following is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of Taylor Brown’s newest novel, Pride of Eden, out March 17th, 2020.…
New Fiction from Robert Alderman: “Shaved”
This is how the fight happened: earlier that morning, while waiting on reveille to bugle from the loudspeakers across…
Poetry Review: “The Light Outside” by George Kovach
George Kovach’s poetry collection, The Light Outside, begins with a narrator who’s stuck holding open a window. He’s …
New Fiction from John Darcy: “Sorry I Missed Your Call”
An hour before the drive, Bubs finds himself sucking down an edible. A big blowout blowtorched dab of a brownie. He c…
Mr. Mendes’ War: Film Review, ‘1917’
“You have to construct a journey for the camera that’s every bit as interesting as the journey of the actor. What I w…
New Poem from Olivia Garard: “Hurry Up”
Hurry up – Halt. And quiet, Marines sleep. – Covers askew necks cocked weighted by the waiting. Dozing so…
Poetry Review: Graham Barnhart’s THE WAR MAKES EVERYONE LONELY
1. The book arrives. By mail and on the cover. There are clouds. Gray clumped in altostratus heaps. A military helico…
Nonfiction from Caitlin McGill: “Paved in Gold”
“Even if one does not know the history, one feels the presence of the past.” ~Peter Balakian “You have to beat the eg…
New Poetry from Amalie Flynn: “Celebrate”
1. Celebrate them. 2. Celebrate the soldier who went to war Just to kill. This soldier accused of shooting and Killin…
Fiction from Peter Molin: “The Brigade Storyboard Artist”
Captain Alex Athens had been the undisputed master of PowerPoint storyboards within the brigade headquarters since th…
New Poetry from Paul Lomax
Faces oak branches reach &n…
Poetry from Bryan Blanchard: “Pillar of Salt” and “The Mannequin”
Pillar of Salt Raining fire, burning steel …And now I see haunted Images of headlessBodies bathed in bloodstained San…
Forgive Me
I have confused the bombs that were in the desert with those birth control devices implanted in the uterus Forgive me…
Lauren Johnson Interviews Amy Waldman, Author of ‘A Door in the Earth’
Amy Waldman’s novel, A Door in the Earth, follows Parveen, a young Afghan-American woman who returns to her war…
Representation: An interview with new literary agent Tracy Crow
Two years ago, Tracy Crow, an author, former Marine, invited me to be a part of the MilSpeak Foundation ON POINT Wome…
Landslide / For Byron Who Was Separated From His Father At The US-Mexico Border
When you left Guatemala. Crossed the border Into Mexico. With your father or How there was a smuggler. Who Too…
New Fiction from Amy Waldman: ‘A Door in the Earth’
Excerpted from A DOOR IN THE EARTH Copyright © 2019 by Amy Waldman. Used with permission of Little, Brown and Company…
It Just Keeps Going
The first time I heard the phrase “Hate Train,” I was stationed in Japan with the Navy, attempting to enjoy a bowl of…
Fighting for All of Time: Katey Schultz’s Novel, ‘Still Come Home’
Still Come Home, the first novel from Flashes of War author Katey Schultz, opens in the tiny town of Imar, Afghanista…
New Poetry from Aaron Graham
PIXELATED WOMAN, WEBCAM SHADE Pixelated woman, even your shadowI know as my lover.It whispered.Ash-white dry-erase li…
Film Review: JOKER, by Adrian Bonenberger and Andria Williams
Andria Williams: Hey there, Adrian. Adrian Bonenberger: Hi, Andria. Williams: So, I heard you recently saw “Joker” in…
Happy Birthday, Afghanistan
October 08, 2019 The war in Afghanistan is now old enough to go to war in Afghanistan. Yesterday the war in Afghanist…
The Spotlight Trial
“Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” -The Gospel of John One day you’re a teenage girl in the…
Poetry Review: Aaron Graham’s BLOOD STRIPES
1. I’m reading Aaron Graham’s war poetry. And I think violence is a volcano. How pressure builds. Between layers of r…
New Poetry from Michael Chang
the secret life of simon & the whale the boy inches close to the water &…
New Poetry from Edison Jennings
A Letter to Greta “…so pitying and yet so distant,” Cecil Beaton Among my father’s posthumous flotsam recently …
New Fiction from Brian Barry Turner
“So, you feel the earth rotating under your feet?” As Specialist Torres grasped tightly to the doorframe of the CO’s …
Knowing Your Father: DNA and Identity
“It is a wise child who knows its own father.” –Homer, The Odyssey Several women I know were stunned in l…
New Fiction from Daniel Ford: BLACK COFFEE
Excerpted from the collection Black Coffee by Daniel Ford, September Sky Press, June 2019. “Are we ever going …
New Poetry from Abby E. Murray
Gwen Stefani Knows How to Get Everything I Want It takes a misdelivered Cosmo to finally understand what I want and h…
New Nonfiction from Andrew Clark: A Church For All
On a spring day in 1984 my grandfather, Leonard Clark, whom we all called Papaw, gathered his children, grandchildren…
New Nonfiction from Andria Williams: Reading Joan Didion in August 2019
In the summer of 1968, while starting several of the essays that would comprise her collection The White Album, Joan …
Turn On, Tune Out, Drop In: Review Essay of Ben Fountain’s Beautiful Country Burn Again
D.H. Lawrence once claimed that the “essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.” This sounds nice…
New Fiction from Roz Wiggins: “Lucky”
I. Under a ceiling topped by swirling fans and surrounded by walls whose windows had no glass, the Private lay…
Interview: The Problem of the Hero: Peter Molin Talks with Roy Scranton
Introduction: Roy Scranton’s soon-to-be published Total Mobilization: American Literature and World War II…
“I Like the Real Stuff”—WBT Interviews Ben Fountain
Ben Fountain, the award-winning author of Brief Encounters with Che Guevera, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, and, mo…
New Fiction from Mike Freedman: KING OF THE MISSISSIPPI
The shine and swagger of a new day. Great Recession? Not Houston. And yet, and yet there had been a speed bump in Se…
New Fiction from Steven Kiernan: “All Your Base Are Belong to Us”
For the amputees of Walter Reed Army Hospital, Segways were the new fad. It had become common to see roving gangs of …
New Poetry from John Milas
Parade the Beef “I declare this meat tasty and fit for human consumption.” – President of the Mess, CLR-27, Lan…
New Fiction from Adrian Bonenberger: “Special Operations World”
No more than 10 percent of the United States military was special operations when I got out. Being in special operati…
Stuck
Ozzy stuck pennies in Huey’s door, wedging it shut, and we all stood in the hallway and laughed as he tried to get ou…
No War With Iran
Nearly eighteen years. That is how long America has been at war since the post-9/11 Authorization for Use of Military…
Japanese Poetry Never Modifies
August 2011 I remember when you first joined, I used to tell you that the Army would be four years, the way that coll…
Wrongful Appropriation of the Soul
In regard to cruelties committed in the name of a free society, some are guilty, while all are responsible. Rabbi Abr…