Hassan Blasim’s 2014 short-story collection The Corpse Exhibition captured American readers with its harrowing portra…
Nonfiction
Nonfiction from Jennifer Orth-Veillon: “From Death Threats to a French Dandy, Afghan Contractors Abandoned by the U.S. Struggle to Find Asylum Abroad”
LYON, France—When the Taliban shoved him out of the sedan with the butts of their Kalashnikovs, Medhi could barely wa…
New Nonfiction by David Chrisinger: “Stories Are What Save Us: A Survivor’s Guide to Writing about Trauma”
The following is an excerpt from David Chrisinger’s new book, Stories Are What Save Us: A Survivor’s Guid…
New Nonfiction from Kristina Usaite: “Against a Cruel Society, I Came Out to Myself”
When I was losing myself, the only thing that saved me was immigrating to America. Only then, with great effort and s…
New Nonfiction from James Warren Boyd: “The Ecstasy of Sister Bernadette”
In seventh grade my Catholic elementary school received a new principal, Sister Bernadette, who strode onto the black…
New Review: Mike Carson on Kevin Honold’s “The Rock Cycle: Essays”
Kevin Honold’s new essay collection, The Rock Cycle, begins in the Arabian Desert. It is 1991. U.S. forces have just …
New Nonfiction by James Wells: “Signs”
June 27, 2008 I count between my mother’s breaths: one-thousand one, one-thousand two. Thirty minutes ago, her …
New Nonfiction from John Vrolyk: “Black Bracelets”
In 2011, two years before I show up to Officer Candidate School, the Marine Corps changes its uniform order to allow …
New Review from Adrian Bonenberger: Brian Castner’s “‘Stampede’: Disaster and Gold Fever in the Klondike”
My earliest exposure to the literature of 19th century Alaska came in the form of Jack London’s Call of the Wild. An …
New Review from Michael Carson: “Cherry” by Nico Walker
Early on in Nico Walker’s Cherry, the narrator, working a dead-end shoe store job to pay for drugs while his parents …
New Film Review from Larry Abbott: “This is Not a War Story”
Timothy Reyes (Danny Ramirez), a young Marine Lance Corporal veteran, spends his days riding subway trains throughout…
New Review from Adrian Bonenberger: “‘The Hardest Place’: Wes Morgan’s Post-Mortem on Americans in Afghanistan’s Pech Valley”
If I were to write a morality tale about America’s counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan—something in line with Ed…
New Nonfiction from J. Malcolm Garcia: “The Forced Disappearance of Sombath Somphone”
Ng Shui Meng speaks of her husband Sombath Somphone in the present tense, with a firm matter-of-fact tone about his d…
New Photo Essay by Arin Yoon: “Standing Up for Change”
My first encounter with Joana Scholtz was as I ran after her (and her husband, Rik Jackson) as they were exiting camp…
A Tale of Two Coups
Forty years ago, I was living in Madrid working on a grant from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation to learn how Spanish …
New Nonfiction from Sarah Haak: “Assimilation”
My husband has downloaded a sleep cycle app for his phone. Every evening he tucks the phone into bed with him, under …
New Nonfiction from Erin Carpenter: “Fully Involved: A Trauma-Informed Approach to Date Night”
Part 1: The Healing Shed In 2016, my husband burned our guesthouse to the ground. He left a t-shirt over a lightbulb …
New Fiction from Brian Castner: The Troll
John Gurdenson’s legs weren’t what they used to be, and though the veteran charged hard on the forecheck, he was slow…
New Nonfiction by Abena Ntoso: Memorial Day
There are four ways of telling what happened. 1. Just tell the truth. Some stories are told just once; others are tol…
The Splintering Effect
Time is much longer when you’re sober, moments like molecules dragging into pixelated detail with nothing to du…
Artist Profile: Larry Abbott Interviews Musician Vince Gabriel
INTRO: Vince Gabriel has been making music since his high school days in New Jersey. Born in South Amboy on Sep…
Praying at America’s Altar: A Review of Phil Klay’s MISSIONARIES, by Adrian Bonenberger
One of the first books I read was given to me by my father, who got it from his father—a children’s version of the Il…
A Brief History of an Apology
Here are questions. How is it possible to engage in a process of healing for the evils of history? Who has the …
Artist Profile: Singer-Songwriter Jason Moon
Jason Moon served in Iraq with a combat engineering battalion. He returned to the States in 2004 and was eventually d…
A Dispatch from Fort Atwater
Nostalgia is another word for history, but only our personal, petty, smalltime histories; history is all about the si…
Loyal to the Corps: A Review of Teresa Fazio’s ‘Fidelis’
The motto of the U.S. Marine Corps, or USMC, is “Semper Fidelis.” Commonly translated to “always faithful,” the motto…
New Nonfiction from Teresa Fazio: “Light My Fire”
The following excerpt is from Teresa Fazio’s Fidelis: A Memoir, reprinted with permission from Potomac Books.&n…
Uncrossable Borders: A Review of Patrick Hicks’s New Novel, ‘In the Shadow of Dora’
As Patrick Hicks’s novel In the Shadow of Dora opens, it is July 1969 in bright-and-sunny Cape Canaveral, Florida. In…
Artist Profile: Musician Emily Yates
INTRODUCTION Emily Yates joined the Army at 19, spent six years in, from 2002 until her “release,” as she puts it, in…
An Interview with Elliot Ackerman
Elliot Ackerman is the author of four novels–most recently Red Dress in Black and White, set in Istanbul primar…
An Interview with Filmmaker Jordan Martinez
First Sergeant Russell Tuason faces a dilemma: does he deploy once again to Iraq to lead the troops he has been train…
New Review: BRAVO! Ben Fountain Scores a Touchdown on Reality
Americans do not genuinely support the troops. This is the impression Ben Fountain’s 2012 war novel Billy Lynn’s…
American Exceptionalism: Quo Vadis?
In view of the failures of the COVID-19 pandemic in the USA, which has seen over 2 million cases and more than 115,00…
Dissent in Iraq
By M.C. Armstrong and Noor Ghazi Protestors in Iraq have a great deal in common with the new wave of protestors in th…
Don’t Erase My History and Don’t Sell My Picture
A photo essay on the ongoing struggle of Korean “comfort women” In 2010, I visited The House of Sharing, a residence …
New Essay by Joshua P.F.: Bombs in the Trash
It was a relatively clear and cool night in the spring of 2008 on our fortified U.S. compound, Camp David, which was …
New Op Ed from Teresa Fazio: This Memorial Day, Let’s Honor Essential Workers
In the first weeks of lockdown, I paced my two-room Harlem apartment, feeling trapped while an unpredictable threat l…
Reading Camus’ ‘The Plague’ in 2020: A Dispatch from Lyon, France, by Jennifer Orth-Veillon and John Tyrrell
“It is as reasonable to represent one kind of imprisonment by another as it is to represent anything that really exis…
New Essay by Anthony Gomes: Is There Finality in Death?
All beings in this world, all bodies must break up: Even the Teacher, peerless in the human world. The mighty Lord an…
New Essay by Lauren Kay Johnson: Things Received
A portion of this essay was originally published in Cobalt Review. It came by helicopter twice a week, if weather and…
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, …
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…