As the United States marks the twentieth anniversary of the beginning of the Global War on Terror as well as an ugly …
Nonfiction
New Nonfiction from Bettina Rolyn: “Adjustment Disorder”
For thirteen years, I stored my boxes of army documents and medical records in various basements, closets, and attics…
New Fiction from Jon Imparato: “You Had Me at Afghanistan”
“I was lying in a burned‐out basement with the full moon in my eyes. I was hoping for replacement when the sun burst …
New Interview from Larry Abbott: Suzanne Rancourt on Poetry, Myth, Nature, Indigenous Life
Suzanne Rancourt’s new book of poems, Old Stones, New Roads (2021) builds on the work of her two previous books (Bill…
New Nonfiction from J. Malcolm Garcia: “Alabama Village”
(Editor’s Note: Some names have been changed for privacy.) The three white, rectangular buildings of Light of t…
New Review from M.C. Armstrong: Diane Lefer’s ‘Out of Place’
I can’t stop thinking about Dawit Tesfaye, an FBI agent in Diane Lefer’s excellent new novel, Out of Place. Shortly a…
New Nonfiction from Rob Bokkon: “Betrayal at Blair Mountain”
There were 10,000 of them. Boys fresh back from the war in France, middle-aged guys who fought in Cuba with TR, and o…
New Nonfiction by John Darcy: “Hypothermia”
The email takes me to a link that takes me to an article displaying two mugshots. The mugshots take me back to winter…
“The ‘Office Space’ of War Novels”: Susanne Aspley Interviews Brett Allen, Author of ‘Kilroy Was Here’
I first heard about Brett Allen’s debut novel, ’Kilroy Was Here’, by tweet from Matt Gallagher (@MattGallagher0), aut…
New Nonfiction from Philip Alcabes: “Peppina”
1. A Child A neglected box in the back of my closet contains a contain a collection of items from my father’s apartme…
Larry Abbott on Warrior Songs, Vol. Three: “The Last Thing We Ever Do: Vietnam Veterans Speak Truth”
Warrior Songs is a series of albums created under the direction of Iraq War veteran Jason Moon, profiled here in Wrat…
New Review from Matthew Komatsu: Adin Dobkin’s ‘Sprinting Through No-Man’s Land’
I cannot separate my early memories of war from those of cycling. I’d just begun to cycle competitively — as a lieute…
New Interview of Author Hassan Blasim, by Peter Molin
Hassan Blasim’s 2014 short-story collection The Corpse Exhibition captured American readers with its harrowing portra…
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…