Contributors
Kevin Minh Allen
Kevin Minh Allen was born Nguyễn Đức Minh on December 5, 1973, near Sài Gòn, Vietnam, to a Vietnamese mother and American father who remain unknown to him. He was adopted by a couple from Rochester, NY, and grew up in Webster, NY, with his two younger sisters. In 2000, he moved to Seattle, WA, to pursue a life less ordinary. Kevin has had his poetry published in numerous print and online publications, such as Aileron, HazMat Literary Review, Chrysanthemum, and Eye To The Telescope. Kevin’s first collection of poetry, My Proud Sacrifice, was published by Goldfish Press in July 2014. His second poetry collection, Go In Clean, Come Out Dirty, was published by Rabbit Fool Press.
Darcy Alvey
Darcy Alvey spent the year of 1969 writing letters to her fiancé in Vietnam. They have been happily married for more than forty years. After receiving a journalism degree from San Diego State University, she worked as a freelance journalist and editor-in-chief of a regional Southern California magazine, winning several national awards given by the North American Mature Publishers Association. She now concentrates on writing short stories, her first love. She has had stories published in Wilderness House Literary Review, Foundling Review, The Write Room, Waypoints, and more. She lives in La Mesa, California, and believes the Oxford comma lends clarity.
Mike Bakkie
Mike Bakkie served with Company H, 75th Rangers, between 1969 and 1970. Prior to that he attended the California University at Hayward. He received his B.A. in Political Science and his draft notice on the same day. He spent four years in green and then returned to his job with AT&T (later Pac Bell). He acquired three Masters degrees in Political Science, Economics, and Applied Mathematics, as well as an MBA. He spent thirty years working in telecommunications before retiring in 1996 at the age of 49.
John Balaban
John Balaban is the author of twelve books of poetry and prose, including four volumes which together have won The Academy of American Poets' Lamont Prize, a National Poetry Series Selection, and two nominations for the National Book Award. In addition to writing poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, his is a translator of Vietnamese poetry, and a past president of the American Literary Translators Association. Balaban is Poet-in-Residence and Professor of English in the creative writing program at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.
Lee Ballinger
Lee Ballinger is an associate editor of Rock and Rap Confidential newsletter focusing on news and politics, and the author of Lynyrd Skynyrd: An Oral History. He is married and is the father of two children. As a third class boatswain's mate, he served aboard the USS John Thomason (DD-760) on three WestPac cruises in the South China Sea during the Vietnam War.
Joshua Barnett
Joshua Barnett is currently in his seventh year of transition from soldier to scholar. He enlisted in the US Army in 2006 as an 11B. After airborne school, he was stationed at Ft. Wainwright,Alaska in the 172 nd Stryker Brigade, 1-17 INF. While in garrison, his unit participated in joint training exercises with Singaporean forces stateside and then deployed to the Philippines for another joint training exercise. He began to find his poetic voice in 2008 with his deployment to Baqubah, Iraq. He is now a graduate student at the University of Central Oklahoma, where he is also the editor-in-chief of New Plains Review. His publications have been limited to op-eds including The Vista and The Daily Oklahoman. The Deadly Writers Patrol is the inaugural publication of his poetry.
Ryan A. Barry
Before he left the Navy, even while still on deployment, Ryan A. Barry began to write his memoir Peace Thru Communication. Since then he has continued to resort back to a childhood passion: writing. The passion behind his words stems from those who are unsure how to write themselves and for those who never came home to have the chance. Currently Ryan resides in Norwalk, Connecticut.
Peter Beckstrom
A former United States Marine, Peter Beckstrom served active-duty from 2006-2010 as Ammo Chief for 2nd Bn, 10th Marine Regiment, Golf Battery – an artillery unit based out of Camp Lejeune's N Street. During his enlistment, Peter deployed twice in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Currently, he is graduating from Stetson University College of Law in the Spring of 2017 and has designs on becoming a state prosecutor. Peter's creative work has also appeared in O-Dark-Thirty and Line of Advance, amongst other journals.
Rana Bitar
Rana Bitar is a physician in the field of hematology oncology practicing in Upstate New York. She was born in Damascus, Syria, and immigrated to the United States in 1990. She is now finishing her MFA in English and Creative Writing from SNHU.
Gregory Wallace Black
Greg Black served as a United States Marine beginning January of 1989. He was stationed in Oceanside, California, where he was part of the 3rd Marine Air Wing and worked as a 3381 Food Service Specialist. While Greg is a native of Mr. Horeb, Wisconsin, he has called Madison home since leaving the Marine Corps. Greg frequently finds solace in writing, as well as going to Dryhootch to participate in groups, programs, and to shoot the breeze with fellow veterans.
Sylvia Bowersox
Sylvia Bowersox served one tour in Iraq as an Army broadcast journalist, and two tours in Baghdad as a State Department portfolio press officer. She has a MA in English from Chico State University, and is now a MFA student in the Creative Writing Workshop at the University of New Orleans. She lives with PTSD, and writes about her experiences in both wars. Her first book, Triggers, a chapbook of war journalism flavored poetry and prose, was published by JerkPoet Press. She has been honored by multiple Pushcart nominations, and her work has appeared in the journal O-Dark-Thirty, Tethered by Letters, Solstice Literary Magazine, Mortar Magazine, Bramble Literary Magazine, The Washington Post, and the anthology, It’s My Country Too. She lives in Wisconsin with her veteran husband, Jon, and her Black Labrador service dog, Timothy.
Clayton Bradshaw
Clayton Bradshaw served in the U.S. Army for eight years as an infantryman. He deployed with 3/2 Stryker Cavalry Regiment to Iraq from 2007 to 2008 and to Afghanistan from 2010 to 2011. He graduated from Sam Houston State University with a BA in English and currently participates in the MFA-Creative Writing program at Texas State University. His work can be found in The Deadly Writers Patrol, Second Hand Stories, War, Literature and the Arts, and O-Dark-Thirty.
L. Burton Brender
L. Burton Brender is a US Army Armor officer stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. He is a native of Cashmere, Washington, and a member of the Military Writers Guild, the Olympia Writers Group, and Write on the River. He is the coauthor of In Cadence, a collection of poetry from two Army officers, and the forthcoming Cashmere, a pictorial history.
Randy Brown
Randy Brown is a retired member of the US 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry "Red Bull" Division, Iowa Army National Guard. He writes about ways to remember, celebrate, and support citizen-soldiers, veterans, and military families at Red Bull Rising. He was a Milbloggies finalist in the Veteran (2011); Reporter (2012) categories, and the 2012 winner of the Military Reporters and Editors' (M.R.E.) independent blogging category. Welcome to FOB Haiku: War Poems from Inside the Wire, his collection of haiku, “war sonnets,” and free verse, was published in 2015.
Robert P. Buono
Robert P. Buono is an Army veteran who served in Vietnam, where he was critically wounded in 1966. A sculptor and painter, he holds an MFA degree from the Art Institute of Chicago and numerous other academic credentials. He designed Vietnam war memorials in Lansing, Illinois, and a state memorial at Stoney Run, Indiana. Robert is a founding member of the Vietnam Veterans Art Group and the National Veterans Museum in Chicago. His paintings Murphy’s Dream Vision and Sin Loi/Desidario are considered works of significant social impact helping to change the way people perceive Vietnam veterans; the paintings helped create public and political attention leading to the City of Chicago’s gift of a public building for the museum in 1981. He resides in Land O’Lakes, Wisconsin.
John Buquoi
A Vietnam veteran, John Buquoi served from October 1963 to April 1965 with the 3rd Radio Research Group (3rd RRU) communications intelligence unit in Saigon and Phu Bai as specialist 5, voice intercept operator. After separation, he returned to Vietnam as a civilian and worked for various defense contracting companies, traveling throughout the country for five years before returning to the States in 1970. He is the author of snapshots from the edge of a war and has been published at Vietnam Full Disclosure, War, Literature & the Arts, Vietnam War Poetry, Discover War Poets, and by Veterans For Peace. He co-edited Letters To The Wall: 2015-2016, published by Veterans For Peace. He is married and lives with his wife, Linda Kim, in Richardson, Texas.
Eric "Shmo" Chandler
Eric “Shmo” Chandler is a husband, father, and pilot who cross-country skis as fast as he can in Duluth, Minnesota. He flew 145 F-16 combat sorties during seven trips downrange. His poetry has appeared in O-Dark-Thirty, Sleet Magazine, Line of Advance, The Talking Stick, Aqueous Magazine, and Grey Sparrow Journal. He is an Associate Member of the Military Writers Guild. His poetry collection, Hugging This Rock, was published by Middle West Press in 2017.
Dave ConnollY
Dave Connolly served honorably with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army in Vietnam from 1969-1969. He is proud to have been, and still is proud to be, a Vietnam Veteran Against the War and a member of the Smedley D. Butler Brigade of Veterans for Peace. He makes his living now as a musician in bar bands and by running workshops for Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam veterans to address, through the written word, their PTSD-related hardships.
Joseph T. Cox
Dr. Joseph T. Cox is a retired U.S. Army Colonel. He was the eighth headmaster of the Haverford School in suburban Philadelphia. He is the author of a collection of poems, Garden's Close, and a critical study, The Written Wars: American War Prose through the Civil War.
David Daniel
David Daniel served in the Army in 1969-70 and teaches fiction writing at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. His novel The Heaven Stone won a Private Eye Writers of America award and was a Shamus Award finalist. Other novels include The Skelly Man, Goofy Foot, White Rabbit, Reunion, The Marble Kite (all St. Martins Press) and two collections of short fiction: Six Off 66 and Coffin Dust. Recent short fiction has appeared in Sleet, Zombie Logic Review, and at The Storyside.
Maurice Decaul
Maurice Decaul is a former Marine, a poet, essayist and librettist whose work has been featured in The New York Times, Newsweek.com, Sierra magazine,
Barely South Review and others. He is a graduate of Columbia University and will be studying for his MFA at New York University beginning in Fall 2013.
JERRY DELLA SALLA, JR.
Jerry Della Salla is an Iraq War veteran, who served as an MP (31-B) for 12 months with the 18th MP Battalion and the 306th MP unit, OIF-3 (2004-2005). During his tour, he earned the distinguished Combat Action Badge while defending his base. Apart from his short play The Discharge, Mr. Della Salla has also written two full length plays titled Last Mans Club and the autobiographical Camp Redemption. In the spring of 2009 released a book of war poetry for NYU titled Nine Lines, where he served as co-editor. His second book of poetry is an anthology from his tour, titled Songs My Trigger Taught Me. He is a graduate of the NYU Tisch School of the Arts and the Stella Adler Conservatory, where he holds a degree in Dramatic Literature and Performance Studies. He currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife and baby daughter Elia Quynh.
W.D. EHRHART
W.D. Ehrhart fought in Vietnam as an enlisted Marine. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife Anne and daughter Leela, and teaches English and history at the Haverford School. He is the author of numerous books of poetry (including To Those Who Have Gone Home Tired and Beautiful Wreckage), memoirs (Vietnam-Perkasie: A Combat Marine Memoir; Busted: A Vietnam Veteran in Nixon's America), essays (In the Shadow of Vietnam: Essays 1977-1991), and a non-fiction book concerning his platoon (Ordinary Lives: Platoon 1005 and the Vietnam War). He is the subject of The Last Time I Dreamed About the War: Essays on the Life and Writing of W. D. Ehrhart (Jean-Jacques Malo, ed., McFarland, 2014).
Dale Eikmeier
Dale Eikmeier grew up in Southern California and, after completing Army ROTC at San Jose State University, in 1978 he began a thirty-year career that spanned the Cold War and the War on Terrorism. He has served around the globe, including Germany, Bosnia, Korea, and Iraq. He is a combat veteran of the Gulf War and the Iraq War. Dale also writes regularly for Joint Forces Quarterly and Small Wars Journal. He now teaches at the Army’s Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth Kansas.
Dave Gardner
Dave Gardner is a retired educator living in the Pacific Northwest with his indulgent wife and three cats. He served in the USAF from 1960 to 1968 and was deployed to South Korea for thirteen months in 1961 as an intelligence operations specialist.
Bob Hackney
Bob Hackney was born April 4th 1944 and grew up primarily in Elm Grove, Wisconsin. He attended Brookfield Central High School and earned a degree in journalism from UW-Madison. Bob was drafted into the Army in 1968 and served in Vietnam until 1970 with the 4th Infantry Division. He contributed articles to Stars and Stripes while in Tay Ninh. He worked for the US Postal Service for nearly 20 years before retiring early due to his battle with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma caused by his exposure to Agent Orange. Bob passed away in August of 2000 at the age of 56 as another casualty of his generation’s war.
Tom HArriman
Tom Harriman attended Swarthmore College, flunked out of the University of California-Berkeley, joined the Army in 1966, and served in the Republic of Viet Nam from March 1967 to October 1968. He returned to Berkeley afer the war and earned his B.A. and J.D. there. He is a member of Maxine Hong Kingston's Veteran Writers Group.
Roberta Hill
Roberta J. Hill, who has published under the name Roberta Hill Whiteman, is an Oneida poet, fiction writer, and scholar. A professor of English and American Indian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she has written two collections of poetry, Star Quilt, and Philadelphia Flowers. Her recent poetry appears in The American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, Northwest Review, American Poetry Review, The Nation, North American Review, The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, and elsewhere.
Joshua J. Hines
Joshua J. Hines is an undergraduate attending Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, where he is a junior working on a BFA in creative writing. Joshua began attending Stephen F. Austin after spending four years as a military journalist in the U.S. Marine Corps. Joshua has been published in The 2015 Piney Dark Collection, The Subplots Lesson’s Chapbook, and The Blue Route, and was also awarded the SFA 2015 Literary Award for Best Creative Nonfiction.
Connard Hogan
Connard Hogan was drafted in 1969 and served more than two-and-a-half years in the U.S. Army as an E-5 intelligence analyst. During his service he was deployed to South Vietnam for one year, assigned to the 55th Military Detachment Unit at II Corps headquarters in Nha Trang. He is now a retired California marriage and family therapist, who has discovered a deep satisfaction in sharing past experiences with others in written form, “If for no other reason than to excise my inner demons.” His life experiences are proving rich with story-telling potential: growing up with an alcoholic father; visiting grandparents on their Kentucky farm; navigating harm’s way as a U.S. Army intelligence analyst in Vietnam; working as a professional with alcoholics/addicts and those with major psychiatric disorders struggling to recover; and hiking/climbing up every U.S. state highpoint, along with several major world mountains.
Philip Julian
Philip Julian, a former member of the 19th Special Forces Group (Airborne), B Company, sited in Pueblo, Colorado. Julian served six honorable years, with primary specialty in demolitions and secondary in weapons. He is a member of the foundational UCLA Wordcommandos Creative Writing Class for PTSD and other veteran issues, created in April 2016, and is located in the Welcome Center for Homeless Veterans in building 257 on the West Los Angeles VA Campus. His first short story, "11th Month, 11th Day, 11th Hour," was published in the Memorial Day 2017 issue of Military Experience & The Arts. His second creative effort appeared in The Review.
Bob Kalkreuter
Bob Kalkreuter served in the Army from 1966 through 1968, and spend 14 months in Vietnam as a military intelligence specialist for MACV SOG. He has placed fifty-six stories in magazines such as eFiction, The Stone Hobo, The Literary Yard, Crack the Spine, Underground Voices, Bartleby Snopes, Edgepiece, Writes For All, The Rusty Nail, and Solecisms. Two of his stories were nomnated for Pushcart Prizes. One story was awarded the Herman Swafford Prize from Potpourri Magazine. Says Bob, “I am now retired and live in North Carolina with the love of my life, three ungrateful cats, and a spoiled dog whose main aspiration is finding an empty lap.”
Tim Karstrom
Tim Karstrom is a retired Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonel. Since 2008 he has served as a logistics officer, trainer, and adviser during six deployments in Afghanistan including two supporting the 101st Airborne Division, and one as the Logistics Officer for the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Afghanistan Engineer District-South. He has published in Army Logistician magazine on the development of logistics officers. In March 2017 he presented during the Central and South Asia (CASA) week at the University of Nebraska-Omaha on Law and Justice as legitimacy, hope, progress and inertia in parts of CASA. He earned a B.A. at the University of Colorado-Boulder in Philosophy, an M.S. in Resource Economics at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and an M.S. in Psychology at Bellevue University.
Brian Kerg
Brian Kerg is a serving Marine Corps officer currently stationed in Okinawa, Japan. He enlisted in 2003 as an 0341 Mortarman, and later commissioned as an 0602 communications officer. He has deployed to the Western Pacific with the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit and to Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan, with NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan. His fiction has previously appeared in Line of Advance and The Report, and his non-fiction has appeared in The Marine Corps Gazette. His short story, "October's Daughter," was a finalist for the 2018 Colonel Darron L. Wright Award for short fiction.
GERALD MCCARTHY
Gerald McCarthy’s books of poems include War Story, Shoetown, and Trouble Light. His poetry and writing have appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines including: Warrior Writers/New Jersey, Postmodernisms (Rutgers University Press), American War Poetry (Oxford University Press), Carrying the Darkness, A New Geography of Poets, We Gotta Get Out of This Place (University of Massachusetts Press), TriQuarterly, America, Nimrod, New Letters, and The Café Review. McCarthy enlisted in the Marines at 17 and volunteered for service in Vietnam. After unloading ships for seven weeks at FLSG-Bravo, he was transferred to the 1st Combat Engineer Battalion in Chu Lai— eventually moving with the out t to Danang. He was arrested his second night back in the United States for interference with a senior police officer in the line of duty, resisting arrest, disturbing the peace and disorderly conduct. His return to duty at a Naval Weapons Station near Charlestown was short lived; as he went AWOL for three months; eventually turning himself in and being imprisoned in the Onondaga County Jail, The Brooklyn Brig, and the Portsmouth/Norfolk Brig. Hospitalized for mental issues (too early for PTSD diagnosis), he was discharged on the day they buried Martin Luther King. He has taught writing at Attica prison, in migrant labor camps, county jails, and schools. He is currently a professor of English at St. Thomas Aquinas College and lives with his wife, Michele, and their sons Nicholas, Benjamin and Nathaniel in Nyack, New York.
W.H. MCDONALD, JR.
Bill McDonald served with the US Army in Vietnam in 1966-67. He was a crew chief/door gunner on Huey helicopters with the 128th Assault Helicopter Company in Phu Loi, South Vietnam. He has written an autobiography, A Spiritual Warrior's Journey, and two books of poetry, Purple Hearts and Sacred Eye-Poetry in Search of the Divine. He is retired from the United States Postal Service and resides in Elk Grove, California. His website, The Vietnam Experience, "shares the emotional and spiritual experiences of the Vietnam War through poetry, stories, and photos by combat veterans."
Anastasia McEwen
Anastasia McEwen is a writer and artist who teaches high school in Guelph, Ontario, the birthplace of John McCrae. Her poetry and short stories have been published in the Eden Mills Writer's Festival chapbook, Freque Magazine, Effervescent, and the Guelph Mercury. Her artwork can be seen in various galleries including The Art Gallery of London, the Robert McLaughin Gallery, Oshawa, and the University of Toronto permanent collection. She lives in Fergus, Ontario with her husband and four children.
Michael McInnis
Michael McInnis served six years in the Navy as an STG (sonar technician— surface), deploying three times to the Persian Gulf onboard the USS Cook (FF-1083), including participating in Operation Eagle Claw, the ill-fated Iranian hostage rescue attempt, as part of the USS Coral Sea task force. He lives in Boston. His latest book, Smokey of the Migraines, was published by Nixes Mate Books in 2017.
JAY MALONEY
Jay Maloney served with the 312th Evac in Chu Lai, RVN, 1968-69. He graduated from Colorado College in 1975. He is a founding member of the 44th UMKRB.
Jeff Manthos
Jeff Manthos, son of a combat fighter pilot, was born at Langley Air Force Base hospital in 1953. As his family was stationed overseas and around much of the U.S., he spent much of his youth traveling. He served as an air crewman aboard the SH-3 helicopter, flying primarily anti-submarine, search and rescue, and medevac missions. His squadron's aircraft carrier was deployed to the Sough China Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Persian Gulf. After his service, Jeff earned a degree in Philosophy and later attended the Violin Making School of America. He as been a professional violin maker for over twenty years. Jeff currently lives in Oregon and can be reached via his website.
William MArr
William Marr came to the United States from Taiwan in 1961 and received his Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from the University of Wisconsin in 1969. A leading contemporary Chinese poet, he has published fourteen volumes of poetry and several books of translations. He is a retired researcher from Argonne National Laboratory and a former president of the Illinois State Poetry Society. He also pursues other artistic interests including painting and sculpting, and has held several exhibits in the Chicago area. He lives in the western suburbs of Chicago.
John Melton
John Melton served as an infantryman in the U.S. Army between 1992-1996, enjoying duty stations in Savannah, Georgia, and Hawaii. He is a home services consultant with a master’s degree in Architecture from the University of Illinois-Chicago, currently residing in Illinois.
John Midkiff
John Midkiff is a Marine Corps veteran. Serving multiple combat deployments to the Helmand province of Afghanistan and Kuwait, he spent four and half years with 1st Battalion, 9th Marines as an Infantry Assaultman/0351. His writing focuses on the common human experience, ranging from coaching his 7-year-old daughter in gymnastics to the epidemic of veteran suicide. John’s work is shaped by his military background. He won Marshall University’s Maier Award in 2013, is married with two children, and frequently explores those relationships in his writing.
John MilleR
John Miller was born in North Carolina, and served with the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg and in Vietnam. In addition to Jackson Street and Other Soldier Stories, he is the author of five critically acclaimed novels: Cutdown, Causes of Action, Tropical Heat, Coyote Moon, and The Power of Stones.
Beth Mills
Beth Mills has been a poet all her life. Her father read poetry to her from the time she could listen, and she carried her love for words into her elementary school classroom, helping children discover the poems inside them. Her brother, Eric Richard Solow, was an ensign in the US Navy and died on September 30, 1966, after his F-4 crashed during a training exercise over the Arizona desert, just shortly before his squadron left for Vietnam. He was a member of Fighter Squadron 121, operating out of the U.S. Naval Air Station in Miramar, California. A poem Beth wrote for him, “Eric Richard Solow, 1944-1966,” was recently published in the Jewish Literary Journal. Her poem, “Waiting,” won an honorable mention in the Gemini Magazine poetry contest of 2016.
Jordan Nate
Jordan Nate is a former sergeant in the United States Marine Corps, having served from 2008-2012. He is an 0311 and deployed to Afghanistan in 2009. His poetry can be found in The Merrimack Review, Juxtaprose Magazine, 805, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of the Larry Thompson Award and a Pushcart Prize nominee. He will be pursuing an MFA in poetry at the University of Alaska Fairbanks the fall of 2017.
Susan O'Neill
Susan O'Neill is the author of Don't Mean Nothing (Ballantine 2001; Mass Press 2004; Serving House Books 2010), a collection of short stories based loosely on her hitch as an Army nurse in Vietnam, and Calling New Delhi for Free (2013, Peace Corps Writers), brief, humorous essays about how technology messes with us all, to the amusement of the gods. She has edited Vestal Review, an ezine/print literary journal for flash fiction, since it began sixteen years ago. Her stories and essays have appeared in commercial and literary magazines, professional journals, Spoken Word zines, and in the Old Days, in real newsprint. She has worked as a reporter, an RN, a storyteller, an envelope-stuffer, and a wedding singer.
Rain E. Palmer
Rain E. Palmer lives in Lexington. He was in the Delayed Entry Program for over a year with the Marine Corps, but due to changes in his personal life wasn't honorably discharged. He is now going to the University of Kentucky and hopes to serve in some other capacity. He has been published in other locations such as The Laurel Review and This Wretched Vessel.
Phillip Parotti
Phillip Parotti has published three novels about The Trojan War and multiple short stories in the “War and Literature” issues of Sewanee Review. Following service as a Naval Officer in the Vietnam period, he taught English Literature at Sam Houston State University for thirty-two years. He is retired and living in New Mexico, where he continues to write and work as a printmaker.
Jacob Paul Patchen
Jacob Paul Patchen was born and raised outside of Byesville, Ohio where he spent his youth tormenting babysitters and hiding in trees. Patchen earns his inspiration through experience, where he writes abundantly about love, war, sex, and alcohol. Jacob is a poet, blogger, author, and combat veteran. He has been published by several journals including GFT Presents: One in Four, O-Dark-Thirty, As You Were, and The American Journal of Poetry. Patchen served as a Rifleman in the United States Marine Corps from 2003 to 2009. He was deployed to Iraq in 2005, where he was tasked with liberating the major cities of Hit and Haditha, along with several small villages up and down the Euphrates River.
George Perreault
George Perreault's fourth book of poetry, Bodark County, was published in November 2016, and features poems in the voices of characters living on the Llano Estacado. Recent work is in High Desert Journal, Weber -- The Contemporary West, and San Pedro River Review.
Phan Nhien Hao
Phan Nhien Hao, born in 1967 in Kontum, Vietnam, immigrated to the United States in 1991. He has a BA in Vietnamese Literature from The Teachers College of Saigon, a BA in American Literature from UCLA, and a Masters in Library Science from UCLA. He is the author of two collections of poems, Thien Duong Chuong Giay[Paradise of Paper Bells] and Che Tao Tho Ca 99-04 [Manufacturing Poetry 99-04]. His poems have been translated into English and published in the journals The Literary Review, Manoa, xconnect, and Filling Station, in Of Vietnam: Identities in Dialogue, and in a full-length, bilingual collection Night, Fish, and Charlie Parker, translated by Linh Dinh.
Mary Ann Rasmussen
Mary Ann Rasmussen's son Steven served in Vietnam with the United States Army artillery from 1969-1970. Her poetry has been published in The Country Poet, Poetry Out of Wisconsin, The Seagull, and Rockford Review.
TJ Reynolds
TJ Reynolds has published non-fiction with NAILED Magazine and The Hour After Happy Hour Review. His poetry has been featured in 0-Dark Thirty. From 2004-2005, TJ served as a gunner for 1/24 Infantry in Mosul, Iraq.
DALE RITTERBUSCH
Dale Ritterbusch is the author of Lessons Learned, a collection of poems centered on the Vietnam War and its aftermath, and more recently, Far From the Temple of Heaven, a collection that contains war poems derived from Vietnam and more recent military encounters. He served in the U.S. Army from 1966 to 1969. After receiving his commission from the Infantry School at Fort Benning, he served as a hazardous munitions escort officer before being attached to JUSMAAG/MACTHAI, where he was responsible for coordinating shipments of aerial mines for dispersal along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and elsewhere in Vietnam. He is a Professor of Language and Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and served as Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of English and Fine Arts at the United States Air Force Academy in 2005-2005.
David Anthony Sam
Born in Pennsylvania, David Anthony Sam has written poetry for over 40 years. He lives now in Virginia with his wife and life partner, Linda, and in 2017 retired as president of Germanna Community College. Sam has four collections and was the featured poet in the Spring 2016 issue of The Hurricane Review and the Winter 2017 issue of Light: A Journal of Photography and Poetry. His poetry has appeared in over 70 journals and publications. Sam’s chapbook Finite to Fail: Poems after Dickinson was the 2016 Grand Prize winner of GFT Press Chapbook Contest and his collection All Night over Bones received an honorable mention for the 2016 Homebound Poetry Prize. In 2017, he began serving as poetry editor for GFT.
Charles Scott
Charles Scott was born in Camden County, Missouri, in 1948. He received a B.A. from Williams College in 1993 and an M.A. from Miami University in 1995. Recently, Charles’ poems appeared in Floyd County Moonshine (Winter 2017) and Poem (May 2017). His full-length collection, Soft Water, will be followed by Starlight Coupe (MadHat Press) in May 2018. He lived in Canada with his wife and son. The Spring 2017 issue of The Deadly Writers Patrol was dedicated in memory of Charles, who passed away, shortly before its release, on April 26, 2017. (USMC, Retired, 1965-1969; Vietnam, February 1968-July 1968, Echo Battery, 2nd Battalion,13th Marines.)
William L. Smutko
William L. Smutko served in the U.S. Army from January 1967 to June 1973. He was stationed in Vietnam with the 9th Infantry Division from November 1968 to November 1970. After Vietnam he was stationed at Ft. Carson, Colorado, from November 1970 to June 1973. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado. He has master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
Leilani Squire
Leilani Squire's father served thirty years in the Navy, during three wars. She was born at Tripler Army Hospital in Honolulu while her father was deployed on an aircraft carrier off the coast of Okinawa, and was raised in the military culture. In 2010 she began facilitating writing workshops for veterans, and is now working with the families of veterans. Her work has appeared in The Sun, Eclipse, Gentle Strength Quarterly, and online at bookscover2cover.com. Leilani is Senior Editor of Returning Soldiers Speak: An Anthology of Prose and Poetry by Soldiers and Veterans (Bettie Youngs Books, 2014). Recently, she became the new poetry editor for the online literary journal, Vietnam War Poetry.
Dennis Stanerson
Dennis Stanerson parlayed the skills acquired as a US military draftee into a stint as a corn, bean, hog farmer in the state of Iowa. He later acquiesced to his lack of a green thumb and spent 25 years performing engineering duties at Motorola Semiconductor in Scottsdale, AZ. He has been retired since 2008 in Scottsdale, AZ.
M.G. Stephens
Dr. Michael Gregory Stephens has published eighteen books, including Lost in Seoul and Other Discoveries on the Korean Peninsula and Green Dreams: Essays Under the Influence of the Irish, winner of the AWP Prize for Creative Nonfiction. His novels about the large Coole family include Season at Coole, The Brooklyn Book of the Dead, and Kid Coole. He has been working on a book about the East Village in the 1960s. He lives in London.
J.B. Stevens
J.B. Stevens lives in Savannah, Georgia, with his wife, daughter, and Yorkshire terrier. He is a former captain in the United States Army Infantry. He served primarily in the Third Brigade of the Third Infantry division and deployed to Iraq from March of 2007 to June of 2008.
Tom Stern
Tom Stern is a retired County Veterans Service Officer in Wisconsin. He served fifteen months in Vietnam (1968-69) with a direct combat support supply unit in the Central Highlands.
Lisa Stice
Lisa Stice received a BA in English literature from Mesa State College (now Colorado Mesa University) and an MFA in creative writing and literary arts from the University of Alaska Anchorage. While it is difficult to say where home is, she currently lives in North Carolina with her husband, daughter, and dog. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of a full-length poetry collection, Uniform (Aldrich Press, 2016). Find out more about her and her publications at her website and on Facebook.
Ryan Stovall
Serving between 2003 and 2010, Ryan Stovall was in the Army for seven years, four of which he spent as a Special Forces team medic (MOS 18D) on ODA 014, in 1st Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group. From their home station near Stuttgart, Germany, Ryan and his team deployed many times to countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and to Afghanistan. Relatively new to writing, Ryan’s work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Geometry, Here Comes Everyone, and The Cape Rock, among other places. His poem, "No Rolling, Shrink," was awarded the 2018 Colonel Darron L. Wright Award for poetry.
Michael M. "Mike" Switzer
Mike Switzer enlisted in the Army and volunteered to serve in Vietnam following his graduation from the University of South Florida. In Vietnam he served with the 173rd ABN Brigade in the Central Highlands, where he was wounded and evacuated in September 1969. After discharge he completed law school at Florida State University, retiring to Tampa in 2007.
Brian Barry Turner
Brian Barry Turner served in Iraq as a U.S. Army combat engineer. His short fiction has been published in The Pass in Review and the Kurt Vonnegut Museum & Library So It Goes Literary journals. He is also a contributor to Task and Purpose.
Richard Van Kirk
Richard Van Kirk is a Vietnam Veteran. He served in the Navy in Vietnam in 1969 on the USS Stribling DD-867, a destroyer that is now a part of some coral reef somewhere. Van Kirk’s ship provided support for Korean ROCs and also plane guarded the USS Oriskany, as well as other opportunities to shoot all of its five-inch white phosphorus shells and other exploding ordinance. The Stribling is near the top of the Mesothelioma list for lung cancer. Van Kirk lost two friends, both of whom worked in the boiler room and engine room, to the disease. His enlistment dates are 9/67 to 9/71. He has published two stories in college anthologies that were related to Vietnam. His son is a major in the Army who has completed two tours in Iraq.
Samuel Van Kopp
A native of Bakersfield, California, Samuel Van Kopp graduated West Point in 2010 and took command of 3rd Platoon, Anvil Troop, 1-91 CAV of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team. Seriously wounded while deployed to Afghanistan in 2012, Sam was evacuated to Walter Reed National Naval Military Medical Center in Bethesda, where he was medically discharged in 2014. Samuel is currently a law school student at Georgetown University in Washington DC.
Stephen John Walker
Stephen John Walker was a member of the U.S. Army’s Special Forces (the Green Berets) from 1965 to 1979. He served as an 11C (Heavy Weapons Sergeant) on two A-Teams in Vietnam, 1967-68. From the jungles of Panama to the Central Highlands of Vietnam, his thirty-year Army career culminated as the Command Sergeant Major of the 5th Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, Berlin Brigade, where he witnessed the fall of the Wall. He is an award winning author whose short stories have appeared in The Pen and The Key, The Paragon Journal, Ricky’s Back Yard, and Military Experience and the Arts. His debut novel, Hotel San Blas: A Caribbean Quest, a finalist in the 2017 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, is set among the islands along Panama’s north coast.
Aaron Wallace
Aaron Wallace is a former U.S. Army Medic. During his enlistment he served as a combat medic, rape crisis counselor, and women’s health coordinator. Since Aaron’s honorable discharge in 2013 he has graduated from Jacksonville University (JU) with honors. At JU he won several prizes for his poetry. Aaron is currently in the second semester of his MFA at Lesley University and has recently been published by The Wrath-Bearing Tree. Outside of writing poetry, Aaron teaches 7th and 8th grade language arts. He lives with his exceptional wife, Darby, and their dog, Benji, in Jacksonville, Florida.
Paul WASSERMAN
Paul Wasserman served as a reconnaissance aircrewman with the Army's Big Red One in Iraq during the Surge. He's published two chapbooks, Say Again All and Minaret and First Poem. Recent poems have appeared in Consequence and Epiphany. He's currently working on a war novel.
Julia Gari Weiss
Julia Gari Weiss is the author of the poetry collection Being Human, published by Thought Catalog Books. She received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and is the recipient of the Academy of American Poets’ John B. Santoianni Award for Excellence in Poetry. Julia has been published in The Huffington Post, The Australian Women's Weekly, Thought Catalog, Old Red Kimono, 3Elements Review, Image Curve, and The Santa Monica Star. She is proudly from Santa Monica, California, and currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.
Paul Wellman
Paul Wellman was a Marine Corps machine gunner who served in a combat role in Fallujah, Iraq. He has previously been published in The Deadly Writers Patrol, as well as Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors. His works often spawn from the realization that military service affords one the opportunity to better understand what they are capable of, taking into account the often blurred lines between dreams, perceptions, and reality.
Arthur Wiknik, Jr.
Arthur Wiknik, Jr. is the author of Nam Sense, the memoir of his Vietnam War experiences. His writing credits include stories in seven different Chicken Soup for the Soul books, and he has also had articles in magazines such as Army, Soldier of Fortune, Players, North American Whitetail, Rural New England, and Heading Out. In 2008, Arthur provided commentary for Lionsgate Films' 20th Anniversary DVD on the making of the 1987 movie Hamburger Hill. In 2010 he was featured in the Scholastic educational book VIETNAM – The Bloodbath at Hamburger Hill. In 2011, Arthur appeared in the History Channel special Vietnam in HD, and in 2012 he appeared on Discovery's Military Channel show An Officer and a Movie with actor and host Lou Diamond Phillips.
Richard Williams
Richard Williams was on active duty in the Army from July 1969 to February 1971, to include 13 months at the 3rd Surgical Army Hospital (MASH) in Binh Thuy, Vietnam, serving as a medical corpsman (91B20) in the intensive care unit. He was a physician assistant (PA) and worked on a psychiatric ward at the Veterans Hospital in New Orleans, and was employed as a lawyer and judge with the Board of Veterans Appeals in Washington, D.C. Williams also studied art evenings at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. Seven of his paintings are part of the permanent collection of the National Veterans Art Museum (formerly National Vietnam Art Museum) in Chicago, Illinois. His portraits of veterans wounded or killed in action are part of the permanent collections of the VA Regional Offices in New York City and Buffalo. Following his retirement as a Veterans Law Judge in 2010, Williams became a mentor at the Buffalo Veterans Treatment Court. He authored an overview of the Court in Glimpses of the New Veteran (Carolina Academic Press, 2015). Williams wrote appellate decisions for 26 years during his employment with the Board of Veterans Appeals noted above.
Barbara zimmERMAN
Barbara Zimmermann's fiction, essays, and poems have been published in numeous literary journals and anthologies including New Millennium Writings, Rockhurst Review, Pleiades, Earth Daughters, Kaleidoscope, Out of Line, and The Deadly Writers Patrol. Under her married name of Bogue, she is also the author of James Lee Burke and the Soul of Dave Robicheaux: A Critical Study of the Crime Fiction Series (McFarland & Company, 2006).