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Kevin Powers was born and raised in Richmond, VA. He joined the army at 17 years old; six years later, in 2004. was deployed to Iraq and served in Mosul and Tal Afar at a time of fierce fighting. After his honorable discharge he returned home to study English at Virginia Commonwealth University, and received an M.F.A. in Poetry from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin in 2012.
Kevin Powers's website
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How did you come to join the army at the age of seventeen?
I wasn't a particularly good student in high school, but I knew that I wanted to go to college. And given the fact that there is a long tradition of military service in my family, enlisting always seemed like a viable option. It was neither encouraged nor discouraged, but I had by then inferred that the military was where a person went to develop the qualities I had come to admire in my father, my uncle, and both of my grandfathers. The cliché, in my case, was true: I thought that the army would "make me a man."
First World War poet Wilfred Owen wrote in the preface to his poems: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity. Does this apply to The Yellow Birds?
I can only say that the impulse to write The Yellow Birds came from a desire to look for some truth that I hoped could be found at the core of that most extreme of human experiences. I also thought that by placing the emphasis on the language, using it to demonstrate Bartle's perpetual, unbearable sense of awe and wonder, I'd have at least a chance of connecting to another human being on an emotional level. I wanted to engage with the imagination above all else, because...
David Abrams was born in Pennsylvania and grew up in Jackson, Wyoming. He earned a BA in English from the University of Oregon and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. Abrams served in the U... (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Yellow Birds
Try:
Fobbit
by David Abrams
Elliot Ackerman is the author of the novels Dark at the Crossing, which was a finalist for the National Book Award; Green on Blue and Waiting for Eden. His writings have appeared in Esquire, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and... (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Yellow Birds
Try:
Waiting for Eden
by Elliot Ackerman
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