Women Veterans are Focus of New 'O-Dark-Thirty'

COVER: "Twoface," photo by
U.S. Marine veteran Magdalena Green

Always a good source for intelligence and trends in today's military writing, editors of the literary journal "O-Dark-Thirty" focused on the contributions of women veterans in their Winter 2016 issue.

The resulting 180-page issue surveys new non-fiction, fiction, poetry, and interviews written by women veterans. The print edition is available for a $40 yearly subscription, or $12 single-copy. The journal, published quarterly by the Washington, D.C.-based non-profit Veterans Writing Project, is also available to read FREE on-line as a PDF here.

In her introduction to the issue, Managing Editor Jerri Bell writes:

We weren't sure what kind of submissions we'd get, or how many. Since we began publishing, we'd only received a few submissions from women veterans. I could count then my digits and have a couple of toes left over. But the response was overwhelming. Not only did we have several times the usual number of submissions to consider, the variety and quality were unusually high. We decided to accept as many pieces as we could possibly print and run online in the month of February, and we still had to decline a great deal of excellent work.

Despite the exclusive theme, the journal delivers its usual high quality and wide variety of voices. Stand-outs are by personal preference—readers will no doubt find one or two particularly resonant, but I will leave that selection to each reader's own tastes. I will, however, share a couple that have stuck with me. One favorite, for example, is the poetry of Anna Weaver. A former U.S. Army parachute rigger, Weaver pulls the cord on some particularly punchy lines in "jokes with civilians":

[…] Our stories have sound effects—engine, rotor, shockwave,
unfolding canopy,
the soft exhale before firing.

Our memories have cadence and caliber, sector and arc,
drill and ceremony.
We cannot sanitize or explain.

Our jargon has no synonyms. Our alphabet
isn't made of letters. There is no signal
to tell you when it's safe to laugh. […]

In her non-fiction story "Wind and Waves," former U.S. Coast Guard officer and diver Tenley Lozano bookends a bracing story of sea duty aboard the sailing barque Eagle with quiet reflections of time spent hiking the Pacific Crest Trail with her husky mix, Elu. Under the surface lies more than a reflection on waves and hills, however. Instead, Lozano expertly tethers her tale to symbolism and tradition and technical details, providing readers not only with scenes, but lessons-learned. For example, she writes regarding a 2005 incident that caused injury to five cadets aboard Eagle:

[I]f the lifeline had been made of half-inch thick double-braid nylon rope and attached with a bowline knot to the bolt, the knot would have been able to withstand the stress of those cadets falling and simultaneously pulling on the rope. The point of failure was the metal clip, but the officers in charge of Eagle had forgotten their background as sailors and relied on metal clips and cables rather than rope or knots.

That is a wonderfully intricate paragraph to loosen, much less to untie. I have come back to it often.

In her short fictional story "How to make Bosnian chicken salad," former Army public affairs soldier Susanne Aspley offers a primer in what can only be described as lemonade journalism. Out of the mouth of a character lieutenant, Aspley offers the following editorial advice, and captures the reality of the job to a T-and-dotted-I:

Let's say you have to do a story on, well, a promotion ceremony, or, say, a bunch of guys pulling guard duty and all they're doing is complaining and moping around and they don't want to be photographed. No problem. Find a story. Everyone has a story. Even the pimply E2 with buck teeth who only joined for the free dental care. You don't have to be a combat vet with PTSD to have a story. They all do. We all do. So get them to talk, and find out what the story is.

The issue ends with a Q&A-style interview between editor Bell and Tracy Crow, the latter a former Marine officer and author of memoir, genre fiction, and non-fiction books. The 11-page conversation feels like eavesdropping on two writer friends having coffee, and is full of inspiring and insightful observations about writing. One example, from Crow:

I'm encouraged by the workshops I lead from time to time that so many women veterans are willing and eager to write about their experiences. Some are turning their experiences into short stories and novels, and that's fine. Others such as Kayla Williams, Miyoko Hikiji, and Jane Blair have produced what I consider to be important memoirs. Some critics, however, will philosophize that all the stories that could have been told have already been told. For example, how many war stories do we need?

As many as can artfully and authentically rendered, I'd say. Because every writer's voice is unique and reveals through the writer's choice of conflicts for her characters to her sentence variations to the formatting of her paragraphs. Every writer approaches a story through a personal lens of perception that's unique to that writer and based on that writer's life experiences.

How Sherpa Wrote a Book: 'Welcome to FOB Haiku'

First of all, before you call out the Poetry Samurai (they're like the Grammar Ninja, but more figurative), let me say that, yes, I'm aware of the difference between haiku and senryu. Haiku is a three-line, 5-7-5-syllable Japanese-inspired poetic form regarding a moment in nature. Senryu is similarly structured—three lines, 5-7-5—but focuses on human foibles.

I write about the military. That roots me firmly in the human terrain. (In the U.S. Army, we brief all other forms of nature under "enemy situation.") So, technically, it would be more correct to say that I write senryu. I still call it "haiku," however, because I also know my audience. You don't need an M.F.A. to know what "haiku" is. Even the @#$%ing Infantry knows haiku.

Back in the day, we learned haiku in grade school. We also learned Robert Frost in junior high, and Shakespearian sonnets in high school. Fast-forward to today, and my Fifth-grade warrior-princess and Third-grade video game technician are both accomplished haiku practitioners. They also learned it in school. "All this has happened before, and all this has happened again."

Because people of all ages and abilities recognize the haiku form, it makes it both accessible and (pun intended) versatile. The best haiku deliver a surprise, a shift in the action or focus. Sometimes, it can be enough to surprise readers with the fact that they just read a poem—or that they learned something in grade school that's still useful.

Given the restrictions of haiku, I personally enjoy the technical challenge of finding just the right words and punctuation, to make my poetic shot-group as tight as possible. As a writer, I don't aspire to lyrical greatness—I want my language to be understandable. I want to entertain someone, and maybe get them to think about things in a different way.

I write for my buddies who don't read poetry, after all—guys who sometimes barely read the instructions to complicated things. That doesn't mean they're not open to new ideas, however, or to seeing old things in new light.

For example, I'm pretty sure that a couple of them will find this haiku, written about emplacing an anti-personnel Claymore, to be both familiar and fresh:

Point *this* side at Them.
Spool yourself away from harm.
Click three times and ... Boom.

After a couple of decades away from the practice—during which I wrote daily newspaper and how-to magazine and Army lessons-learned articles—I started writing poetry again in 2011. I was at a free weekend writing workshop on the campus of the University of Iowa, run by Emma Rainey and the non-profit Writing My Way Back Home.

The prompt had something to do about capturing a moment of wonder. I had been stewing for months, having earlier that year embedded with my former Army colleagues deployed to Afghanistan, about an interaction I'd had with my former commander while downrange. I kept wondering what it meant. Rainey gave us a few minutes to write, mental brakes off, with some soothing music playing in the background. I started writing about my first meeting downrange with Ryder-6. Ten minutes later, I had the start of a book.

I didn't realize that then, of course. It took years to admit I might be a poet. In the meantime, I still considered myself a just-the-facts non-fiction guy. Over the years, my journey was shaped and influenced by meeting many fellow travelers, such as poet Jason Poudrier ("Red Fields") at the first (and later, the second) Military Experience & the Arts Symposium.

I also met poet Suzanne Rancourt there—she of the sharp wit and long knives—who led by example and humor, and later convinced me to take over for her as the poetry editor for the group's literary journal, "As You Were." (FREE PDF of the latest issue here!)

At the 2012 Sangria Summit for writers of military fiction and non-fiction, held in Denver, Colo., I learned about independent and electronic publishing as methods to overcome obstacles to market—barriers such as having too narrowly focused a niche. Little did I realize how much of that information would factor into my actions in 2015. More on that in a minute.

I learned to use poetry to dig at the moments and memories that didn't quite make sense, or that didn't immediately seem to support a larger narrative. Sometimes, in my explorations, I found myself at the bottom of an intellectual hole. Sometimes, I found myself at the crest of a hill. Perhaps most importantly, I learned to accept the risks of sharing my work with others.

I started to get poems published in veteran-friendly venues, such as "The Pass in Review," "Line of Advance," the Veterans Writing Project's "O-Dark-Thirty," and the annual anthology series "Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors" from Southeast Missouri State University Press, Cape Girardeau, Mo.

Later, I began to get traction in non-military but Midwestern-themed outlets, such as the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library's "So It Goes" literary journal, and "Midwestern Gothic." Each of the above titles represents an editorial staff that is open to exploring ways to bridge the gap between civil and military experiences. We need more such bridge-builders.

Earlier this year, I found I had enough poems—published and unpublished—to produce a chapbook. I started to submit manuscripts to chapbook contests and publishers, recognizing that "light-hearted verse about the light infantry" is more of a rabbit- than a fox-hole—a niche within a niche within a niche. (I joke that I've finally discovered a vocation that pays less than newspaper journalist—that of "military poet.") Meanwhile, I added pages. The manuscript grew to book-length.

I began to realize that my poems, collected and curated, roughly reflected the narrative arc of my Army career, from Boot Camp to Bagram and back home again. The sum might be greater than its parts.

Having set a personal 2015 deadline for getting at least one major writing project off my desk, I published this month via Middle West Press LLC, Johnston, Iowa. This was the same entity that had, in 2011, endorsed my freelance media credentials when I applied to embed for a few weeks in Afghanistan. The result is a 90-page trade paperback, which is also available in various e-book formats, including the Amazon Kindle, and others via Smashwords.

The cover design of "Welcome to FOB Haiku" mimics the hardcopy Army doctrine and technical manuals we once shlepped to the field by the truckload: Matte finish. Subdued colors. Comforting and camouflaged. Theoretically fits in a cargo pocket, just like the brigade TACSOP.

The cover image is a pencil drawing by Aaron Provost, the original of which I proudly display in my undisclosed writing location. Long-time readers of the Red Bull Rising blog may remember my crush on the Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected ("M-RAP") trucks that epitomized so much of our country's thinking and tactics during Operation Enduring Freedom. I'm pleased to put that love on display. Even wrote a sonnet about it.

I continue to write haiku, while also working on my non-fiction muscles. A couple of pals from the Military Writers Guild and I are mutually resolved to make 2016 the year of non-fiction. On the Chinese Zodiac, it's also the year of the Monkey. That seems appropriate.

So stay tuned. And thanks for your continued readership. As always, I look forward to your questions, comments, insights, and now ... reader reviews?

Like the Red Bull says: "Attack! Attack! Attack!"

*****

You can buy "Welcome to FOB Haiku: War Poems from Inside the Wire" in print here and here. ($9.99 U.S.)

You can buy the e-book on Kindle here, or in a variety of e-book formats via Smashwords here. ($5.99 U.S.) More vendors to be listed soon!

Final Call: Women-Veterans Issue of 'O-Dark-Thirty'

Editors of a special Spring 2016 women-veterans issue of the literary journal "O-Dark-Thirty" are nearing the end of their submissions window. Deadline is Oct. 31, 2015.

Jerri Bell—along with juggling her own research, writing, and blogging—is managing editor of the journal:

"We’ve received four or five times the usual number of submissions for a quarterly issue, and the quality of the ones I've read so far has been high," she writes at "Presumption and Folly," her own military-themed blog. "We’re excited to be able to publish some of the work, and we expect that the themed issue will be longer than usual."

"We're closing the window for submissions for the issue at midnight on October 31. This will give our editors time to read everything carefully before selecting work for both The Review, our quarterly print journal, and The Report, our core online publication. Women veterans who write—if you haven’t yet submitted work, please consider doing so! Short fiction, nonfiction, and poetry submissions are welcome, and the work doesn't need to be on a military subject. If you don’t make the deadline for the themed issue, don’t worry: we read submissions year-round and would welcome a chance to read your work at any time."

Editorial guidelines are here.

Veterans Writing Project Relaunches Mentor Network

U.S. Army 1st Lt. Tyler Smith evaluates the shooting score of a German soldier
at Kunduz province in Afghanistan, July 12, 2013, while conducting operations
in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Photo by Army 1st Lt. Charles Morgan

The Washington, D.C.-based non-profit Veterans Writing Project has recently relaunched a mentorship program aimed at helping military service members, veterans, and family members take their larger writing projects to the next level.

Organizers say the program has previously assisted writers of novels, memoirs, plays, and poetry chapbooks—concrete projects with discrete timelines—using an informal network of fellow writers.

According to the VWP mentorship program webpage:

It works like this: Someone who needs help with a project approaches us with a proposal (simply an explanation of the project and the issues the writer wants to work through). We go through our list of volunteer mentors looking for someone with the correct skill and experience set to take the project on. We connect the two people. Between themselves, they create an informal contract (one full set of edits, two back-and-forths of a manuscript, whatever the two agree on). Once this is complete the two can walk away or continue as they wish.

Coordinator for the VWP mentorship program is Peter Molin, a retired Army officer and former instructor of English at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, N.Y.. He regularly writes about military-themed literature and culture at his blog, Time Now.

In addition to the mentor program, Veterans Writing Project supports military veterans' and family members' creative expressions through writing through writing seminars, curriculum, and the literary journal "O-Dark-Thirty." The organization also actively participates in and advocates for research into writing practice as a therapeutic intervention.

Notes from a Veterans-in-the-Arts Symposium

MEA2 event organizer Jason Poudrier, MEA founding president Travis L. Martin, and
current MEA president David. P. Ervin celebrate a successful veterans-in-the-arts
symposium  conducted May 14-17, 2015 at Cameron University, Lawton, Okla.
PHOTO: Military Experience & the Arts

More than 100 military veterans, writers, artists, scholars, therapists, and others assembled in the second Military Experience & the Arts Symposium (M.E.A.2.) May 14-17, 2015. The event was held at Cameron University, Lawton, Okla., near the Fort Sill military installation. Participants attended nearly 75 workshops, performances, meet-ups, and seminars on the communication of military experiences through expressive arts, including music, writing, dance, painting, and more.

The first such event was held 2012 in Richmond, Ky. Each symposium has been under the banner of Military Experience & the Arts, a Kentucky-based non-profit organization.

News reports about the event included this broadcast from ABC affiliate KSWO-TV Channel 7: "Veterans Create, Display Art." (See text, video at link.)

The Cameron campus was lush and green, the dirt red, and the weather relatively cool and blustery. (Wind conditions kept me off the on-campus disc golf course.) The region has gotten plenty of rain this year, and flash flood concerns were often as high as local waterways. Some friends from Wisconsin had to find hotel rooms at the last minute, after the cabin they'd reserved on Fort Sill turned about to be high and dry, but surrounded by a moat impassible to anything but tactical vehicles.

Still, to update that old Army saying about the weather and training: "If it's raining, we're still painting!"

While it was impossible to participate in every workshop or experience, I hope the following notes provide some sense of the talents and topics available at MEA2.

DAY 1:

Saw lots of friends from MEA1. Met friends I didn't know I knew already. ("Who I am depends on who you are and where we are ...") Met entirely new friends. Even friends who'd said they'd gotten published via venues identified at the Red Bull Rising blog. Oklahoma, in short, is a very friendly place. 

In the evening, former Marine and poet Suzanne Rancourt read from her work in a theater setting, and made me cry. And then, former Marine Roman Baca's Exit 12 Dance Company took the stage, and performed a ballet about motherhood and separation and deployment. They also made me cry. 

When the lights went up, the mother who commissioned/choreographed the piece was suddenly in the audience, as well as one of her two sons, who is stationed at nearby Fort Sill. And later, the troupe re-purposed a dance to an impromptu Native American flute performance by Albert Gray Eagle. 

"Magic" does not adequately describe all this.

DAY 2:

Made DIY comic books with Steve Gooch and Marc DiPaolo of Oklahoma City University, then learned about contemplative photography from Buddhist and Army veteran Tif Holmes from the non-profit Engage the Light of Lubbock, Texas. 

Wrote about the homefront through prompts suggested by Amber Jensen of South Dakota State University, a writer and Army National Guard family member, whom I first met back at Great Plains Writers' Conference 2014. 

Then, dinner with the jazz musicians of 77th Army Band ("The Pride of Fort Sill!"), followed by provoking insights about Military Sexual Trauma issues from Miette Wells, Phd., an Air Force veteran. 

Finally, video presentation from Ben Patton, grandson of WWII Gen. George S. Patton, and founder of "I Was There" Film Workshops. The latter uses digital film-making as a collaborative therapeutic intervention for people diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. 

So much energy here! So many sparks!

DAY 3:

Got the gouge on self-publishing from MEA president David P. Ervin (author of "Leaving the Wire: An Infantryman's Iraq"), then learned about flash non-fiction techniques from Rob Roensch of Red Earth MFA in Creative Writing at OCU. 

After lunch, Tara Leigh Tappert of The Arts and the Military blew my mind by academically connecting the Arts & Crafts movement with the origins of occupational therapy as a profession, and the establishment of craft shops U.S. military installations in the '50s, '60s, and '70s. Scholarship like that puts veterans and arts organizations such as MEA into historical context. "All this has happened before, and all this will happen again." 

Evening performances included readings of flash fiction by Veterans Writing Project Managing Editor Jerri Bell (from whom I learned lots of new sailor slang. Household-6 will be very pleased), and physical comedy (Masks! Mime! Puppets! Juggling!) from Hoosier Doug Berky. Berky's re-telling of the Korean fable, "The Tiger's Whisker," is a family-friendly tale of one family's journey of healing from PTSD. I hope to invite him to Iowa someday.

Bottom line: The Military Experience & the Arts Symposium 2 provided a unique opportunity to exchange insights on expressive arts techniques, tools, scholarship, advocacy, and healing on veterans issues—and encouraged veterans, students, educators, and arts practitioners to try new things.

Godspeed, and God bless! I can't wait to see what happens next!

Blogger Seeks Cites for Women-Veterans Bibliography

On her new blog "Presumption and Folly," military writer Jerri Bell, a U.S. Navy veteran and managing editor of the Veterans Writing Project's "O-Dark-Thirty" literary journal, has published a call for examples of women-veterans' writing from all eras, services, and nationalities for inclusion in an on-line bibliography. She has also illuminated a special writing opportunity for women veterans in next spring's "O-Dark-Thirty."

Bell's blog takes its title from a quote attributed to Deborah Sampson, who enlisted in the Continental Army in 1782. Bell's mission statement reads: "Presumption and Folly is a site dedicated to writing by (and sometimes about) women veterans. My goals are to curate writing by women veterans, to bring it to a wider audience, and to encourage more women veterans to write about their experiences."

Bell writes about her project:

The project began in 2013, when I started developing a version of the Veterans Writing Project’s seminar exclusively for women. Our curriculum, Writing War, was full of examples of the writing craft from the work of veterans from Leo Tolstoy to Tobias Wolff; but only one woman veteran—Vera Brittain, a British nursing assistant in World War I—was represented. I decided to find more examples from writing by women veterans. It turned out to be harder than I’d anticipated.

In March 2014, Cara Hoffman (author of "Be Safe I Love You") asserted in a New York Times op-ed that “stories about female veterans are nearly absent from our culture.” Kayla Williams, a former Army linguist and the author of two memoirs about her service in Iraq and her marriage to another former soldier with a traumatic brain injury, responded two months later in the Los Angeles Review of Books with a list of “essential contemporary war literature by women.” Both articles challenged me to go deeper – to attempt a more comprehensive survey of writing by women veterans, to think about what women veterans are and aren’t writing, and to consider how we tell our stories. The blog posts on this site represent that attempt.

In her work as managing editor for the Veterans Writing Project, Bell has also recently issued a special call for fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and other literary writing by female veterans for a special issue of the "O-Dark-Thirty" journal in spring 2016. Deadline is Oct. 31, 2015. According to the guidelines:

The editors will consider short stories (up to 5,000 words; 3,500 and under is better), creative nonfiction/essay (same word limit), poems, and short plays. Excerpts from memoirs and novels are acceptable if the excerpt stands alone as a story in its own right. Please limit submissions to one prose piece or a batch of up to three poems. Work is not required to be on a military theme!

A Round-up of Poetry Books About 21st Century Wars

An impromptu "war party" of writers at the national Association of Writers and Writing
Programs (AWP) conference in Minneapolis earlier this month. Poets, novelists, memoirists,
essayists, and other story-tellers engaged in exploring themes and experiences of war.

April is National Poetry Month. The wars continue.

Civilians, service members, and veterans continue to engage America's 21st century wars through writing, and more than a few are doing so through poetry. War poetry didn't end with the First World War. As a means of communicating and commenting on military experiences, poetry remains just as relevant and vital as other forms of literature and media.

Don't believe me? I'll let an expanding and diverse chorus of modern war-poetry voices argue the point for me.

Earlier this month, I was lucky to meet up with some war-lit practitioners and camp followers at the 2015 conference of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (A.W.P.) conference in Minneapolis. Because I'd traveled by ground, I was also able to stuff my rucksack with plenty of new books and journals. More than a week later, you might say I'm still conducting document exploitation.

The AWP conference is the largest such event in North America, gathering approximately 12,000 writers, editors, teachers, and others. The 2015 event featured more than 2,500 presenters and 550 readings, panels, and lectures about craft. The concurrent book fair featured more than 700 presses, publications, and other organizations engaged in the making and distribution of literature. In 2016, the event travels to Los Angeles. In 2017, the event travels to Washington, D.C.

Rather than posting my own After-Action Report, I'll point readers toward such dispatches at Peter Molin's "Time Now" blog, as well as author Sioban Fallon's blog.

Now, let's talk about poetry.

I've heard it said that the people who read (and buy) poetry are most likely poets themselves. The truism is often meant as a criticism, as if poets were alone in constructing elaborate (and, no doubt, metaphorical) echo chambers in response to the worlds around them.

Poetry is just like any activity, however. People who write fiction tend to buy and read fiction. People who create video games tend to buy and consume video games. People who talk on Sunday morning news shows tend to watch Sunday morning news shows. Bottom line: We're all talking to ourselves, when we talk to each other.

What poetry offers over some of these other forms is that it is relatively accessible. The cost of entry is low. You can buy a collection of poetry for less than $20, or you can browse the public library shelves. Books of poetry don't take very long to read, and you can skim and flit about the pages to find poems that interest you. You can toss poems away with little guilt, or enthusiastically push them into other readers' hands and lives.

Regardless of your reaction to any given work, you will at least have considered, for the briefest of moments, the world around you as seen through someone else's eyes. And that is the first step toward changing minds, and changing realities.

As Tim Green, editor of the poetry magazine Rattle, recently said in an interview on the Poetry Has Value blog:

The real currency for poetry is attention; poets get to have a voice in the din, they get to move people, change the thinking, explore ideas and feelings, create images that were never there before—and we have a pretty large group of poetry lovers to appreciate it. It’s an art that costs extraordinarily little to pursue, is open to anyone, is encouraging of unique voices and perspectives. […]

So, in celebration of National Poetry Month, here's a start toward a "Mother of All 21st Century War Poetry Lists." These are titles that are on my bookshelf—those which deal with Iraq and Afghanistan and places in between—any and all of which I personally recommend to you. Again, it's a start. Check them out. Collect them all. Trade with your friends.

Most importantly, tell me what I'm missing!

COLLECTIONS:

• "All the Heat We Could Carry" (2013) by Charlie Bondhus. Narratives of gay soldiers and their partners.

• "Stateside" (2010) by Jehanne Dubrow. Poems from the home front.

• "Bangalore" (2013) by Kerry James Evans. Red Bull Rising review here.

• "Clamor " (2010) by Elyse Fenton. Poems from the home front.

• "Medic Against Bomb: A Doctor's Poetry of War" (2014) by Frederick Foote

• "Overwatch" (2011) by Allen Gray

• "Shortly Thereafter" (2012) by Colin Halloran

• "War" (2013) by Chuck Rybak

• "Army Cats" (2011) by Tom Sleigh

• "Here, Bullet" (2005) and "Phantom Noise"(2010) by Brian Turner. Red Bull Rising review of the poet's recent memoir here.

• "The Shape of Our Faces No Longer Matters" (2014) by Gerardo Mena. Red Bull Rising review here.

• "Red Fields" (2012) by Jason Poudrier. Red Bull Rising interview with the author here.

• "Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting: Poems" by Kevin Powers. Red Bull Rising review here.

ANTHOLOGIES:

• "Enduring Freedom: An Afghan Anthology" (2011; pending re-release August 2015). Poems from U.K. military service members, veterans, and family members.

• "Load Poems Like Guns: Women's Poetry from Herat, Afghanistan" (2015) translated by Farzana Marie

• "Heroes: 100 Poems from the New Generation of War Poets" (2011). Poems from U.K. military service members, veterans, and family members.

• "Washing the Dust from Our Hearts: Poetry and Prose from the Afghan Women's Writing Project" (2015). Works in English from participants in the program's videoconference workshops.

FREE! ON-LINE MIL-POETRY JOURNALS:

• "Ash & Bones" on-going series on military themes

• Military Experience & the Arts' "Blue Streak"

• Veterans Writing Project's "O-Dark-Thirty"

• "Wife and War" poetry blog by memoirist Amalie Flynn

Press Seeks Non-fiction on Coming Home from War

Publishers at Hudson Whitman, the small press of the distance-learning institution Excelsior College, Albany, N.Y., are seeking non-fiction stories from military service members, veterans, family members, and friends on a theme of "Coming Home: The Personal Aftermath of Iraq and Afghanistan." Word count is 1,000 to 6,000. Deadline is May 1, 2015.

Writers whose works appear in the anthology, to be published in spring 2016, will each receive $200, publication, and two contributors' copies.

The anthology project is headed by Dario DiBattista, a U.S. Marine veteran of the Iraq War, and non-fiction editor of the Veterans Writing Project's "O-Dark-Thirty" journal.

The call for submissions reads, in part:

As part of a Memorial Day speech in 1884, Oliver Wendell Holmes [Jr.], veteran of the Civil War, famously orated:

"The generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. In our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn that life is a profound and passionate thing. While we are permitted to scorn nothing but indifference, we have seen with our own eyes, and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after us."

In the 21st century, as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars—some of our nation’s longest conflicts—have risen and taken shape, men and women will turn to writing, as they have for centuries, to explain, to communicate, to heal, and to try to understand. Their stories—powerful, new, and necessary—will reveal the circumstances of those who served, as well as those who loved them, those who helped them, and those who stayed behind.

In the spirit of acknowledging this range of voices, Hudson Whitman/Excelsior College Press is opening a call for stories of coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, and the personal aftermath created by these wars. The call is open to those who have served, as well as their families, spouses, relatives, and friends.

Many popular books focus on combat—war made visible, from the outside. We are seeking stories that help us comprehend the inside, the powerful yet often invisible events that shape the hours, days, nights, weeks, months, and years after coming home.

Submit in Microsoft Word (.doc) format via Submittable here. While not required, please include mention of any affiliations with Excelsior College programs. Authors will be notified by June 15, 2015.

Questions regarding the anthology project may be directed via e-mail to: dariodibattista AT yahoo.com

Mil-Writing Workshop, Brookings, S.D., Feb. 28-Mar. 1

The Veterans Writing Project's Ron Capps will be conducting a free writing workshop, from Sat., Feb. 28 to Sun., Mar. 1, on the campus of South Dakota State University, Brookings, S.D.

The workshop was inspired in part by a conversation at the 2014 Great Plains Writers' Conference, also hosted by the university, in which students, military science and English faculty members, veterans agencies and offices, and other stakeholders explored opportunities for mutual support.

Based in Washington, D.C., the Veterans Writing Project facilitates literary writing workshops nationwide; supports research on writing as a therapeutic intervention in healthcare; and promotes military-themed writing through its "O-Dark-Thirty" on-line and print journals. Workshop participants–including service members, veterans, and family members–learn about techniques that are applicable to writing fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and plays.

Amber Jensen, an instructor at SDSU, also notes that Capps' South Dakota seminar is an extension of a writing workshop that meets regularly on the campus of South Dakota State University. Attendance ranges from 4 to 8 participants, and meetings are every other week. "Our goal in the workshop is to create a sense of community, and to ensure that our military-affiliated students and community members know that we value their stories," she writes.

Space in the Veterans Writing Project weekend workshop is limited. Lunch is provided. To register for the workshop, contact Jensen via e-mail: amber.l.jensen AT sdstate.edu

Each 'O-Dark-Thirty' Packs Punch, Prose, and Poetry

Portions of this Red Bull Rising blog post originally appeared Oct. 2, 2013.

In the current literary terrain, there are dense, fine-printed journals that cover war and themes of war. There are also imposing anthologies of war fiction and fact. Also combatting for the public's attention are war novels, memoirs, and journalistic explorations and exposés.

Whatever the genre, however, too few of these are easy for readers to infiltrate. By force of page-count alone, too many tomes seem ready to overwhelm or intimidate—often driving away civilians who are, ironically, often considered the high-payoff targets of military writing.

Not so, however, the Veterans Writing Project's journal "O-Dark-Thirty."Launched in 2012, the print journal is published quarterly by the Washington, D.C.-based non-profit, along with occasional on-line dispatches of additional prose and poetry, essays and interviews. As the journal's mission statement reads:

In our seminars we give participants the skills and confidence they need to tell their own stories; O-Dark-Thirty is the platform to put those stories and others in front of readers. This is not a peer-reviewed professional journal, nor is it a judged literary contest. Our editorial style is more curatorial than other journals. [...]

Each print edition averages less than 100 pages, and provides a brief burst of covering fire from each category of writing. It's accessible and approachable, easy-to-digest. It can also be indelible, however ... unforgettable.

In short, it's short. A quick hit of literary adrenalin. A mini-bottle of inspirational Tobasco. Each issue debuts new voices, demonstrates the versatility of each writing form, and depicts the military experience in new and provoking ways. Then, it disappears into the night. [...]

Stick a copy "O-Dark-Thirty" in your right cargo pocket, or hand it off to a brother or buddy. Better yet, use a subscription as a regular reminder to keep writing. A 4-issue subscription costs only $30; individual copies are $10.

*****

A 2012 e-mail interview with Veterans Writing Project founder Ron Capps appears here. Also, click here for additional background on the group's useful differentiation of writing-as-therapy and writing-as-expression.

For submission guidelines to "O-Dark-Thirty,"click here.

'O-Dark-Thirty' Publishes Poem about Driving to Drill

Traditionally, National Guard soldiers attended regular military training drills close to home: In the village green, or at a camp ground, or at the local armory.

The latter building was a centerpiece of many communities, used as much for social gatherings as military musters. In fact, living in rural Iowa in the early 1990s, one could still navigate most any medium-sized town by surveying the locations of a few archetypical buildings: The courthouse, the bank, the fire station, the water tower, and the National Guard armory.

In the Iowa Army National Guard, we used to say that we were a locally grown organization with a statewide mission. Sons would enlist in the same units as had their fathers and grandfathers. If the local unit was Field Artillery, you were a cannon-cocker. If it was Infantry, you were a foot soldier. Just like pappy and grand-pappy.

Times, demographics, and missions change, however. Rural areas have lost population to urban concentrations. Daughters and wives are now just as likely to join the military, leading to still more family names on unit manning rosters. And, as they progress in rank, citizen-soldiers often find it necessary to transfer to other military units located in other towns, in order to find new challenges and opportunities for growth.

It used to be that only Iowa National Guard officers might be asked to drive more than an hour to their military unit. Now, many mid-level and senior enlisted soldiers willingly drive for hours to their parti-time military jobs. We've become a state organization with dwindling local roots.

In some (too few) assignments, I lived only five minutes from my bed to the armory's front door. In others, I was 55 minutes. For a long stretch of years, however, my monthly commute averaged around 2.5 hours. When the first formation of the day is 0800 hours, that means wheels-up by 0515—assuming good weather and road conditions, and that your presence isn't required at any pre-drill coordination meetings. At best, then, call it an 0430 wake-up—provided you've packed your duffel, shined your boots, and ground the coffee the night before. "We do more before 9 a.m. than most people do all day" wasn't always a lot of fun.

Looking back, however, some of my favorite times in uniform were spent driving to drill in the early-morning dark, sipping double-strength coffee, and listening through the A.M. static to distant radio stations still operating on nighttime power. Later on, of course, I realized that it all added up to good training for running the night-shift in a Tactical Operations Center ("TOC"), keeping an ear on multiple radio nets. You might say I was driven to success.

I don't miss the periods of forced wakefulness, but I do miss the deliberate mindfulness and mental preparation brought about by long miles.

Many of my former colleagues were on drill status last weekend, so it was appropriate that the on-line version of the Veterans Writing Project's "O-Dark-Thirty" journal coincidentally published a poem written about those early-morning Interstate commutes. It's called "dawn patrol," and I hope you like it.

You can read it here.

*****

You can now support the Washington, D.C.-based non-profit Veterans Writing Project, publishers of the on-line and print literary journals "O-Dark-Thirty," by participating in the AmazonSmile program. Designate the Veterans Writing Project as your favorite non-profit here, and Amazon will donate 0.5 percent of the price of your eligible shopping to the organization.

For an Amazon FAQ regarding the program, click here.

Book Review: 'Seriously Not All Right'

"Seriously Not All Right: Five Wars in Ten Years" by Ron Capps

Military and U.S. State Department veteran Ron Capps likes to say that he served on the ragged edges of civilization, including tours in Central Africa, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Dafur. In a newly available memoir, he describes how that service nearly unraveled him personally, professionally, and, most of all, psychologically.

Pieced together, his book also illuminates the limitations of ad hoc diplomatic and military efforts in a world challenged by terrorism, poverty, and genocide. Finally, his work serves as an example of why creative non-fiction/memoir is a vital tool in bridging the societal divide between military and civilian audiences. Everybody has their own war, and we are best served to remember that not every soldier's story fits into a neatly packaged narrative arc of home-and-back-again.

Seriously—you should read this book.

Capps was both a U.S. Army intelligence officer and a civilian Foreign Service Officer. Whether in military uniform or State Department mufti, Capps describes his roles as a something akin to that of a reporter. "I've joked over the years that, at its core, my job was to talk to people and write down what they said," Capps writes. "It sounds simple, and it is to a point. But it becomes exponentially more interesting and difficult if there is shooting and burning and killing and dying going on around you." [p. 4-5]

Bespeaking his State Department training, Capps is obviously master of the pointed understatement. Despite the harrowing circumstances of some of his tales, his authorial tone is always friendly and conversational, and he delivers his stories with a club-chair confidence of clear-eyed reflection. Between emotional slugs to the gut, you can almost hear the clink of ice in the glass.

That's not to say that Capps is world-worn and -weary, and incapable of idealism. When a general officer tells him that it is too late for an observation mission in Rwanda to do any good for people, for example, Capps' response borders on insubordination. "General, we're talking about a hundred thousand people," Capps says. "They need help, and you have the power to save them." [p. 97] When the general subsequently challenges Capps' method of counting the population, Capps shames him out of the room. All he has to do, he tells the general, is "count the feet and divide by two."

Overall, the collection of essays is full of similar wry humor, keen observations, lessons-learned and truths told. This anecdote, for example, will resonate with anyone who has ever dealt with a distant headquarters: Rousted out of bed by a long-distance call from the State Department Operations Center about news reports of a bomb blast in Pristina, Kosovo, Capps tells the over-eager caller that it will take a few hours for him to confirm the incident:

"Can't you go now?"
"No, you see, a bomb just went off down there."
"Right, that's why we want you to go."
"Right, and that's why I want to wait a few hours, just in case another one is sitting there ready to go off."
"Oh." [p. 73]

The book's title is taken from Capps' daily system of rating his own mental health while downrange, a scale downhill from I'm All Right to I'm Not All Right, past Vaguely Not All Right, to Seriously Not All Right or worse. Having weathered years of dispassionately and diplomatically documenting shocking displays of humanity's inhumanity, Capps finds himself facing a personal Catch-22 dilemma: Does he ask for medical help to address his symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (P.T.S.D.), so that he can continue to do his job? Because, if he does, he'll likely lose his security clearance ... and his job.

He writes from Afghanistan:

The Taliban have launched a couple of rockets toward the base during the week, so we are all a little on edge, but that isn't what's keeping me up. I am bundled into my sleeping bag, trying to control my racing heart, and trembling because the dead have come to talk with me. [...] The night before, it was the dead from the village of Racak [Kosovo]. Forty-five of them, shot in the back of the head and left to die in that rocky ditch on a frozen January morning in 1999. They dropped by for a chat. "Why didn't you do more to save us?" they ask. Why, indeed. Night after night they appear on the big screen of my mind in oversaturated Technicolor, writhing and imploring. [p. 123-124]

Capps finally did pull the proverbial pin on his dual-hatted career—after nearly pulling the trigger in a suicide attempt downrange—and asked for the medical help he needed. After retiring, he used the G.I. Bill to complete a Masters of Fine Art (M.F.A.) in writing. He now leverages his talents as founder of the Washington, D.C.-based non-profit Veterans Writing Project. There, he helps other military veterans and family members share their experiences through non-fiction, fiction, poetry, and other writing. He also helps study writing as a potential therapeutic intervention at the National Intrepid Center of Excellence, Bethesda, Md.

In other words, Capps is all right. And he's helping others get there, too.

*****

Disclosures: The Red Bull Rising blog received a review copy of this book. For a 2012 Red Bull Rising interview with Ron Capps, regarding his work with the Veterans Writing Project and its O-Dark-Thirty literary journal, click here. The organization and publication have been featured regularly on the Red Bull Rising blog. Finally, Capps was a presenter at the March 2014 Great Plains Writers' Conference, Brookings, S.D., at which the writer of the Red Bull Rising blog was also a presenter. They shared a drink or two.

Special 'O-Dark-Thirty' Spotlights Summer Workshop

The Veterans Writing Program, Washington, D.C. has released a special edition of its print and on-line literary journal, "O-Dark-Thirty." The issue's content was created in a summer writing and film-making seminar on the Mount Vernon campus of George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

The 2013 event was part of a veterans writing initiative sponsored by the university's writing program.

More than 40 military service members, veterans, and family members from around the nation participated in the week-long residential seminar. There, they crafted films, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and plays.

The resulting special issue is available on-line as a free PDF download here. The issue features seven works of non-fiction, six poems, and two plays. This is the second time plays or scripts have been presented on the pages of "O-Dark-Thirty," which has been published since spring 2013.

Instructors at the seminar included:

• Joseph Bathanti, poetry

• Mark Farrington, fiction

• Kelly Kennedy, non-fiction

• KJ Sanchez, playwriting

The allied non-profit Patton Veterans Project, New York, N.Y. also supported the event via its I Was There Film Workshops.

The non-profit organization was founded by Benjamin Patton, the youngest grandson of World War II Gen. George S. Patton, and author of 2012's "Growing Up Patton." The organization's work focuses addressing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (P.T.S.D.) and Traumatic Brain Injury (T.B.I.) through film and narrative. At the June 2013 seminar, film-making instructors also included Christina Raia, Minos Papas, Sean Mannion, and Alex Arbogast.

Seven short films created by seminar participants can be viewed on-line here.

A website for the Patton Veterans Project is here. A Facebook page is here.

A website for the Veterans Writing Project is here. A Facebook page is here. The organization's "O-Dark-Thirty" literary journal website is here. Single issues or 4-issue subscriptions are available here.

The cover of the special "O-Dark-Thirty" issue was designed by veteran Janis Albuquerque.

New 'O-Dark Thirty' Issue is an All-Fiction Special

The Veterans Writing Project's quarterly literary journal "O-Dark-Thirty" celebrated its second year with the recent Veterans Day publication of an all-fiction issue. The issue has been posted free on-line as a PDF file, along with the organization's previous four issues.

A print edition of the all-fiction issue is still pending, according to editors. Meanwhile, poetry, non-fiction, and other military writing continue to be regularly featured on the project's website, under the section labelled "The Report."

The works of six military writers are included in the 80-page all-fiction issue of "O-Dark-Thirty," which is available free here. Story themes include hard looks at race, sex, and injury.

“We are made to persist. That's how we find out who we are.”

—Tobias Wolff, "In Pharaoh's Army"

After quoting the 1994 memoir of Vietnam War veteran Tobias Wolff in the issue's introduction, fiction editor James Mathews argues that

[...] constant persistence in the pursuit of conflict [is] the surest method to revealing the truth behind character, story and ultimately, the human condition. [T]he men and women veterans who have shared their fiction with us understand this pursuit. Their persistence reveals poignant and often harsh realities for their characters, but also truth about who we are.

The issue's cover design, by Iraq and Afghan War veteran Janis Albuquerque, features a detail of the Korean War Veterans Memorial. This year marks the 60th anniversary of that conflict.

The "O-Dark Thirty" publications continue to accept submissions year-round. Click here for guidelines.

Single-issues and four-issue subscriptions are available for on-line purchase here.

Each 'O-Dark-Thirty' Packs Punch, Prose, and Poetry

In the current literary terrain, there are dense, fine-printed journals that cover war and themes of war. There are also imposing anthologies of war fiction and fact. Also combatting for the public's attention are war novels, memoirs, and journalistic explorations and exposés.

Whatever the genre, however, too few of these are easy for readers to infiltrate. By force of page-count alone, too many tomes seem ready to overwhelm or intimidate—often driving away civilians who are, ironically, often considered the high-payoff targets of military writing.

Not so, however, the Veterans Writing Project's journal "O-Dark-Thirty."

Launched in 2012, the print journal is published quarterly by the Washington, D.C.-based non-profit, along with occasional on-line dispatches of additional prose and poetry, essays and interviews. As the journal's mission statement reads:

In our seminars we give participants the skills and confidence they need to tell their own stories; O-Dark-Thirty is the platform to put those stories and others in front of readers. This is not a peer-reviewed professional journal, nor is it a judged literary contest. Our editorial style is more curatorial than other journals. [...]

Each print edition averages less than 100 pages, and provides a brief burst of covering fire from each category of writing. It's accessible and approachable, easy-to-digest. It can also be indelible, however ... unforgettable.

In short, it's short. A quick hit of literary adrenalin. A mini-bottle of inspirational Tobasco. Each issue debuts new voices, demonstrates the versatility of each writing form, and depicts the military experience in new and provoking ways. Then, it disappears into the night.

Consider the most recent, Summer 2013 issue, for example:

• Graduate student Elizabeth Sherman writes an unflinching essay about hooking up with a combat veteran on campus.

• Paul Van Dyke writes a time-and-memory-jumping story inspired by his extended 2005-2007 tour in Iraq. Dyke deployed as part of the Minnesota National Guard's 1st Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry "Red Bull" Division (1-34th BCT).

• Former combat engineer Samuel Chamberlin writes a poem that captures one of the little-explored frustrations of life on the FOB. It reads, in part:
  
  Within the wire you can't shoot back, the
  Katyushas start to mangle the CHUs carelessly
  crashing within the perimeter, fists clenched
  in unreciprocated rage, later, when 
  
  The smoldering fiberglass ceased to smoke [...]
  you think about the bottle rocket tipping over, the
  plastic bottle melted into the Virginia
  crabgrass, a burnt patch forever remains.

• Jim Matthews interviews Siobhan Fallon, author of "You Know When the Men Are Gone," an interconnected collection of short stories published in 2011.

Stick a copy "O-Dark-Thirty" in your right cargo pocket, or hand it off to a brother or buddy. Better yet, use a subscription as a regular reminder to keep writing. A 4-issue subscription costs only $30; individual copies are $10.

*****

A 2012 e-mail interview with Veterans Writing Project founder Ron Capps appears here. Also, click here for additional background on the group's useful differentiation of writing-as-therapy and writing-as-expression.

For submission guidelines to "O-Dark-Thirty,"click here.

The Veterans Writing Project's Fall 2013 writing seminar is Oct. 26-27 in Washington, D.C. The seminar is free to veterans, service members, and adult military family members. Participants must provide their own transportation, lodging, and meals. See the calendar for information on how to apply.