The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland (just outside of the nation’s capital) will hold a second veterans’ writing workshop April 6-May 18. This free, six-week prose-writing workshop is aimed at active-duty troops, veterans, and their dependents. The workshops are part of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, the innovative program that documents and preserves the wartime experiences of men and women in uniform and their families.
The newest Operation Homecoming workshops will be held at VA Medical Centers, military hospitals, and affiliated centers such as the D.C. Writer’s Workshop, in communities around the country. Operation Homecoming is a partnership with the Department of Defense and the VA, and is strongly supported by The Boeing Company.
The Writer’s Center workshop will be led by James Mathews (above), an Iraq War veteran and the author of the award-winning short story collection Last Known Position. He joins an impressive list of writers who have conducted more than 60 Operation Homecoming writing workshops here and overseas. That list includes Tobias Wolff, Jeff Shaara, Marilyn Nelson, Bobbie Ann Mason, Joe Haldeman, Richard Currey, and Mark Bowden.
This workshop is limited to 16 participants who will be selected on a first come, first served basis. For info or to register, call 301-654-8664.
Posted on March 6th 2009 in Fiction, In the Classroom
“Combat changes a person. It changed me.”
Those are the words of Marine Corps Vietnam veteran George Eyre Masters in “Missing in America,” a powerful essay he wrote that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on June 29.
Masters uses his feelings about how best to support our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan as a way to get into a gripping account of his time in the trenches in the Vietnam War. “Listen up,” he says to those who want to know how to treat returning troops today. “If you’ve never hunted humans, if you’ve never been hunted; if you haven’t been shot at on a regular basis, one thing you could try is to appreciate what this person has been through. Then get down on your knees and pray, and thank your lucky stars it wasn’t you.’
He then takes us back to Quang Nam Province in 1968, and Masters’ evocative prose brings you right into the combat zone. To wit: “Concentrating on the ground, I breathe in shallow drafts. Turning my head I scan the hot, windless valley. Alone under my helmet, wet under my flak jacket, the sweat rolls down the inside of my legs. I follow Valdez, the radio man, 10 meters to my front. Valdez, with his antennas tied down, shifts his rifle. Where Valdez steps, I step. I feel more than see the forward progress of Koster, the point man. Then Frenchy, Davis, Stillman, Billy Mac and Valdez. Hearing Barberra behind me, I’m aware of Duke and Ski like a snake knows his tail.”
Masters is at work on a novel. If it’s as good as his essay, we’re in for a treat. You can reach him at author@GeorgeEyreMasters.com His Web site is www.GeorgeEyreMasters.com
Posted on July 1st 2008 in Fiction