"By 2010, a generational divide between junior officers—lieutenants and captains—and field grade officers—majors and up—divided the officer corps in ways unforeseen in 2005." From February 7, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/02/07/c...

"Halloran’s Icarian fall could also be years of troubled drift post-service, collapsed relationships, or even his initial literary forays, inflected with high hopes and subsequent disappointments." From January 21, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/01/31/c...

"...the last thing the narrator is at the end of the story is calm, reasonable, and satisfactorily arrived at an explanation of what a true war story is all about." From January 23, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/01/23/w...

"Riffing on the latent implications of 'unmanned' in the phrase 'unmanned aerial devices,' Huber inquired what it meant for war fiction when its heroes are displaced from the battlefield to drone command centers 1000s of miles away." From Jan 17, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/01/17/c...

"Paul does not plan to be a distant, neglectful husband and Natalie has no intention of being tempted by another man, but so it happens in the novel and so it still happens to military couples." From January 11, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/01/11/t...

"The protagonist of each novel begins as a hopeful idealist, mostly secular and not ideologically motivated, and each is brought to ruin by the experience of trying to assist Americans." From January 1, 2016. acolytesofwar.com/2016/01/01/i...

"The operators seem enormously pleased with their self-images as swashbuckling rogues who have killed many times with impunity." From December 26, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/12/26/b...

"The poems’ military tones portray the contortions the Army inflicts not just on its members’ language and lived lives, but their identities and emotions, while the literary playfulness makes the contortions palatable...." From December 20, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/12/20/r...

"Clearly and defiantly, though, Old Silk Road places soldier drug use on the Iraq and Afghanistan war-writing table..." From Dec 13, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/12/13/t...

"Critics–the “beadles of literature,” as they were called by early American novelist John Neal–apparently are not as impressed by this year’s offerings as they have been in past years by war-writers such as Phil Klay, Ben Fountain, and Kevin Powers." Dec 7, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/12/07/2...

"Williams’ point is that such anatopic moments created cognitive dissonance for American soldiers that made it hard to distinguish between war and peace, enemy and noncombatant, and, within themselves, their soldierly and civilian identities." From Nov 26, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/11/26/i...

"Atticus Lish’s novel Preparation for the Next Life, about the catastrophic dissolution of an Iraq veteran and everyone with whom he comes in contact... was a dour, doleful counterpoint to the triumphalist roar of the Veterans Day festivity." From November 17, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/11/17/v...

From November 3, 2015--almost exactly ten years ago, when the very active war-writing scene brought forth new books and authors and events and happenings almost every week. acolytesofwar.com/2015/11/03/r...

"Buzzell relates especially to Doerries’ description of Ajax, who as Buzzell puts it, 'returns home from war and feels as if he’s been betrayed, gets depressed, snaps, goes on a blind killing spree, then kills himself with his own sword.' Yikes!" From Oct 24, 2014. acolytesofwar.com/2015/10/24/t...

"Very subjective, and not definitive, but I wouldn’t walk into a room of war writers without knowing them all." From October 17, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/10/17/a...

"The following is a story ... in which I adapted Ovid’s myth of Arachne and Athena to a modern context involving the creation of storyboards in a brigade headquarters in Afghanistan in response to a tactical screw-up." From Oct 7, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/10/07/o...

"Finally, Renehan even uses the phrase 'time now' multiple times–how could I not like that?" From September 28, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/09/28/w...

"Where Wynne’s War seems fanciful and The Watch pulls its punches, The Valley’s noir and police procedural elements convey a moral seriousness—a bigger message—that manages to implicate the entire US military mission in Afghanistan." From September 22, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/09/22/w...

"And yet, Green Zone failed to capture the zeitgeist of its moment, the hearts-and-minds of Bush-and-Cheney-haters (other than Michael Moore), or the ire of red-state flag wavers, a pretty remarkable trifecta of underwhelmingness." From August 31, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/08/31/w...

"2011 would see the publication not only of You Know When The Men Are Gone, but Helen Benedict’s Sand Queen, and the years after 2011 would see much more fiction about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, authored by veterans and civilians alike." August 21, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/08/21/2...

"...the Greek mythos is so full of pompous grandiosity that it leaves no room for the qualities Ovid prizes most: alertness, agility, imagination, irreverence, and quickness..." From August 12, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/08/12/w...

"...you would have thought Fort Bliss would have been the movie, not American Sniper, to stoke national conversations last year. And yet, Fort Bliss seems to have underwhelmed and underperformed, and consequently neglected and passed-by..." From August 4, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/08/04/s...

"Only Hassan Blasim seems able to resist what must be an American impulse to smile for the camera, but I can attest that in conversation Blasim doesn’t miss many chances to put things in humorous perspective." From July 28, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/07/28/a...

"Having worked as an intelligence analyst and the author of a cool coming-of-age novel called Echo of the Boom, Neely-Cohen combines writing chops with an ultra-alert mind thoroughly in tune with our generational moment." From July 24, 2015: acolytesofwar.com/2015/07/24/v...

"Read my story, please, read the link, and then read today at least one story from In Our Time, Hemingway’s great collection of home-from-war fiction." From July 21, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/07/21/i...

"Thus Sacks seems not very impressed by the war lit he’s read so far, giving it what feels like a grade of C- or even D- for its failure to achieve all that it might have." From July 19, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/07/19/c...

"In particular, Castner describes what it means to be overcome by 'The Crazy'—those oh-fuck moments after war when you realize just how screwed over combat and danger have made you, no matter how normal you appear or try to be." From July 12, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/07/12/t...

"And if American Sniper‘s success means that contemporary war-story-tellers have finally hit the sweet spot of war-story popularity, I wonder what that bodes for war writing and war movie-making to come?" From July 5, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/07/05/t...

"The striking cover of Sand Opera prepares the reader well for what’s inside: Metres has created a 'terrible beauty,' to use Yeats’ phrase, out of the grimmest of grim subject matter." From June 26, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/06/26/w...

"Carpenter’s admiration for SEALs is writ large on every page of Eleven Days, but the novel’s unique and valuable aspects are other than descriptions of SEAL training, equipment, culture, and history, of which there are many." From June 22, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/06/22/s...

"...a smart young writer-buck might pack all 20 of the motifs I’ve named into one super-story that then becomes more popular than American Sniper..." From June 11, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/06/11/b...

"Hamilton ... eschews portraits of troops and battle and instead offers a compelling story about how war ensnares a wide range of characters other than those in uniform." From June 5, 2015. ://acolytesofwar.com/2015/06/05/masha-hamiltons-what-changes-everything/

"The ASO, for example, writing of the junior enlisted faction of the military known as “E4s,” who tend to be the most reliable indicator of unit morale, writes, 'if there actually was an E-4 Mafia, Colby Buzzell would be the godfather.'” From May 31, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/05/31/c...

"Some are by veterans, one is by a non-veteran author, and the rest are by critics and book-reviewers, but all in my mind are major statements in regard to the imaginative literature written by Americans about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan." From May 27, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/05/27/a...

"On the right in the photograph is Captain David Taylor, one of my lieutenants when I commanded a company in the 82nd Airborne Division. In the picture, taken in 2001, he’s standing on a hill outside Gnjilane, Kosovo..." Photo by Bill Putnam. May 25, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/05/25/m...

"Every woman we saw on the roads of Khost province wore blue burqas that covered them from head-to-toe. When we passed them in our trucks, they would turn away from us and hunch down in a ball until we passed." From May 17, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/05/17/i...

"The Afghan poets who participate in AWWP do so at great risk—the hardship and danger of writing publicly, especially for Western audiences, is writ large in many Washing the Dust from Our Hearts poems." May 6, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/05/06/t...

"But a mark of Goolsby’s skill is that he refuses to blame military service or war single-mindedly on the troubles that befall Wintric, Torres, and Big Dax. Those things are catalysts, certainly, but it’s more than that." From April 23, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/04/23/t...

"Taking matters into his own hands, Benjamin Busch recruited an all-star line-up of war authors—Schultz, Fallon, Brian Turner, and Phil Klay—for a panel titled “Telling Our New War Stories: Witness and Imagination across Literary Genres.” From April 18, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/04/18/m...

"This year’s event was hosted by Kaboom author and Words After War mainstay Matt Gallagher, who had many nice things to say about me and my fellow readers Paul Wolfe, Teresa Fazio, and Brandon Willitts." From April 12, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/04/12/t...

"Specifically, Masmoudi examined representations in recent Iraqi fiction of American “camps,” or what we call more often a FOB: armed enclaves of foreigners that spread parasite-like across the country in the 2000s after the American invasion." From April 4, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/04/04/c...

"Words After War—a New York City literary organization notable for its rapid rise to prominence, built on a sensibility deeply connected to its New York City location and an expanded sense of what a community writing group might do and be." From April 3, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/04/03/s...

"I’m moderating a panel titled 'Who Can’t Handle the Truth? Memoirs by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans' that features Ron Capps, Kayla Williams, and Colin D. Halloran." From March 25, 2015. //acolytesofwar.com/2015/03/25/time-now-live-and-coming-to-a-town-near-you/

"Appreciation Yak: Only thing I like about Fayetteville is all the eye candy. Military men are the best men. I’m in heaven every time I come home from school." March 14, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/03/14/a...

"Through the audacity of its imaginative reach, as well as the acuity of its insight into what war in Afghanistan is about, Green on Blue significantly expands the borders of contemporary war literature." From March 10, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/03/10/t...

"The mortar and ghost scenes showed Decaul the master of two trains of stagecraft—representational fidelity to real life heightened aesthetically and the magical permutation of real life in the pursuit of greater artistic truth." From March 1, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/03/01/h...

"His portrait of the Koran-saturated belief systems and ways of life of contemporary Pakistanis is a badly-needed detailed representation of a world Americans basically spent a decade fighting without knowing much about." From Feb 20, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/02/20/l...

"As a recently retired faculty member at West Point... I can attest to Samet's commitment to using her course as a laboratory for change on behalf of an Army otherwise capable of only clunky efforts at self-critique and transformation." From Feb 14, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/02/14/n...

"All of which is funny, because music remains vitally important in the lived lives of soldiers at war. Every soldier since 2001 I’m thinking has gone to war with a playback device full of songs and their heads full of many more." From Feb 7, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/02/07/w...

"Some of us like Scranton all the more for who he is, but, skipping past inside-war-writer-circle dramatics, what about the charges Scranton levies against war narrative?" From Feb 1, 2015. acolytesofwar.com/2015/02/01/r...