Poem by Amalie Flynn: “Ours”
…
Tag: Afghanistan
New Poetry by D.R. James: “Stunned”
New Poetry by D.R. James: “Stunned”
…
New Poetry by Jason Green: “Winter Haiku,” “Spring Haiku”
New poems by Jason Green: Winter Haiku and Spring Haiku
…
New Fiction by David James: Oxenstone
Dark clouds were building over the mountains to the north, like Giorgione’s Tempest. I bought a glass of red at the r…
New Fiction by J. Malcolm Garcia: Pleasantries
The gauze bandage had come off in his sleep, and he touched a bare patch of warm skin and the tight line of ten stitc…
New Fiction by Matthew James Jones: Excerpt from Predators, Reapers, and Deadlier Creatures
I'd been in Afghanistan for three months when I saw the woman in the marketplace die. Thirty or forty men haggled the pr…
New Interview with Matthew James Jones
Predators, Reapers and Deadlier Creatures (PR&DC) is unafraid to be funny about serious subjects. Can you tell us…
New Fiction by Abu B. Rafique: The Madman of Sheen Bagh
The little mountain-village known as Sheen Bagh sat right on the border. So exact was the placement that the people i…
New Nonfiction by Avory Schanfelter: “Condition Black”
Time in a combat zone passes strangely. When you are surrounded by the incredible, the human mind has a tendency to d…
New Fiction from Matt Jones: “The Fisherman”
“You coming to work, New Guy?” Sailor asks, and I snarl at my nickname. Dude gives me the creeps—somehow they …
New Poetry by J.S. Alexander: “Sabat”
New Poem by J.S. Alexander: “Sabat (Loyalty)”
…
New Fiction by J. Malcolm Garcia: “An Arrangement”
I escaped to America after my fiancé, Farhid, died. He was an officer in the Afghan National Army in Bagarm when he w…
Peter Molin’s Strike “Through the Mask!”: Three Vignettes
Memoirs written by soldiers and Marines who fought in the Second Battle of Fallujah in Iraq and the Korengal Valley i…
New Fiction by Tim Lynch: “The Skipper”
It was a typical Thursday night at the Taj Tiki Bar, tucked away off the Jalalabad – Kabul road in the hamlet of Bagr…
Peter Molin’s “Strike Through the Mask!”: Fallujah-Korengal/Korengal-Fallujah
In my blog Time Now: The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in Art, Film, and Literature I rarely reviewed memoir and non-f…
New Nonfiction from Michael Gruber: Review of J. Malcolm Garcia’s “Most Dangerous, Most Unmerciful: Stories from Afghanistan”
Humanity in Afghanistan For the average American G.I. who served in Afghanistan, the country was of a different world…
New Poetry by Jennifer Smith: “So This is My Career?”
New Poem by Jennifer Smith: “So This is My Career”
…
New Review by Adrian Bonenberger: John Milas’ “The Militia House”
In the Mind of Madness There is a nightmare I used to have with some regularity even before my time in the military, …
New Nonfiction from Andrew Davis: Korta Za: Go Home
Andrew Elliot Davis was born July 1, 1990 in Worcester, MA; his family moved to Milford, NH, where he graduated high …
Peter Molin’s Strike Through the Mask!: A Review of Andrew Bacevich’s “Paths of Dissent”
What did you do if you were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan and believed the wars you volunteered to fight were uneth…
Peter Molin’s Strike Through the Mask!—Elliot Ackerman’s “The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan” and Jamil Jan Kochai’s “Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories”
It’s a commonplace that America largely ignored the long war in Afghanistan while it was being fought. Now, aft…
New Nonfiction by Bettina Rolyn: “Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?”
I have come to do a writing residency at the Museum of Loss and Renewal in Molise, southern Italy, in a remote mounta…
New Fiction by Michael White: “Eid Mubarak, Merry Christmas”
My eagerness propelled me up the airplane steps. Eleven years to the day. Well, technically eleven years and a day. W…
New Nonfiction: “Survivor’s Paradox” by Chris Oliver
When I first saw the photo of David Spicer in a 2009 Army Times, I was excited to recognize my friend there on the pa…
New Fiction from Peter Obourn: “Wild Horses”
Lee Harkness was supposed to meet this guy Smitty at a bar called Marty’s on 14th Street at a specified time. Lee was…
New Fiction from J. Malcolm Garcia: “Viraj”
Viraj sat in a room behind the motel reception counter, eating a bowl of bhaat with his fingers when the desk bell ch…
New Fiction from Cameron Manning: “Glory Chasers”
May 3, 2009 After Captain Short returned from his training with the Australians, he scheduled himself to take leave t…
New Fiction from J.G.P. MacAdam: “A Sleeping Peace”
Author’s note: I arrived at this story after reading an article in Rolling Stone called ‘Highway to Hell:…
New Nonfiction 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 Fiction from J. Malcolm Garcia: “Love Engagement”
Noor and his wife Damsa moved to Paris when the Russians invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Twenty-two years later, after t…
Interview with Navy Veteran and Artist Skip Rohde, by Larry Abbott
Skip Rohde was an officer in the Navy for twenty-two years, with four submarine deployments and service in Desert Shi…
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 Fiction from Adam Straus: “ANA Checkpoint”
Sergeant Reiss insisted on giving a full patrol order every time we left the wire. I thought it was overkill, …
“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 Flash Fiction from Drew Pham: “On Their Lips, the Name of God”
This is the memory that stays with him as his blood abandons the body and life fades—this, the one comfort that will …
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…
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…
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…
Fiction from Peter Molin: “Cy and Ali”
The following short story is based on the myth “Ceyx and Alceone,” as recounted in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Cy busied hi…
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 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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
A sickness of the soul: remembering Adam and Tim Davis
Correction submitted by Delta Company paratrooper: five, not four, paratroopers died from the IED. “Matthew Tay…
New Essay from Claudia Hinz: The War at Home
Michael Florez felt called to the Marines. “No greater love than dying for your brother,” the 42-year-old Oregon resi…
New Poetry by Amalie Flynn for the WWI Centennial
Zone Rouge (for the centennial) 1. When the land was. 2. Full of bodies dead. And twisted. 3. When the fighting was. …