My Latest Interview

I promise I will post some reviews soon, I really will, but work reading and home repairs and general illness (as it turns out, the only thing that will make you feel worse than untreated Lyme disease is starting to treat it with high-dose synthetic antibiotics, and I have to spend even more time in […]

My Chat with Veteran and Author Brian Van Reet About Literary Creation and Military Service, Part II

Recently author Brian Van Reet and I had a long chat about art, war, life–pretty much everything. In Part I of our conversation we discussed, among other things, the process of literary creation, the military-civilian divide, and feasibility of reinstating the draft. The continuation of our conversation is below. EPC: I think it can be hard […]

My Chat with Veteran and Author Brian Van Reet About Literary Creation and Military Service

As I work on my research about, and prepare for my class on, contemporary war writing, a number of authors and translators have graciously agreed to talk to me. A couple of weeks ago I posted my chat with British veteran and author Andy Owen; this time it’s American Brian Van Reet, author of Spoils, […]

My Chat with Veteran and Author Andy Owen about War, Literature, and PTSD, Part II

The New Literary War Hero of Chechnya, Iraq, and Afghanistan Image from “Ninth Company,” dir. Fyodor Bondarchuk When I began reading and writing about contemporary Russian war prose, especially connected to the Chechen wars, I thought that the Russian/Chechen experience, and the literature coming out of it, was unique. And of course the Chechen wars […]

My Chat with Andy Owen About War, Literature, and PTSD, Part I

The New Literary War Hero in the Age of the Global War on Terror (Image from the film “Captive,” dir. Aleksey Uchitel) While this blog was originally focused mainly on my side hustle job of writing and reviewing fantasy, readers may have noticed a certain focus on matters military in recent posts, as in my […]