F180. Unsung Epics: Women Veterans' Voices

Room 407, LA Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
Friday, April 1, 2016
12:00 pm to 1:15 pm

 

As novelist Cara Hoffman observed, female veterans’ stories have the power to enrich our understanding of war and of our culture, art, nation, and lives. Yet their stories are largely absent. Five female vet writers address this narrative gap: How do women veterans’ stories differ from those of men and civilian women writing on war? Can their work have the same commercial and critical success? Do audiences have different expectations? How can these stories help bridge the civilian-military divide?


Participants

Moderator:

Jerri Bell, a retired naval officer and instructor/editor for the Veterans Writing Project, tailored VWP's writing seminar to meet the needs of women veterans. She has published fiction and nonfiction, and with coauthor Tracy Crow, has a military-themed nonfiction book forthcoming in 2017.

Lauren Kay Halloran is a former Air Force public affairs officer and Afghanistan veteran. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction writing from Emerson College. Her forthcoming memoir chronicles her coming-of-age against the backdrop of war, through her mother’s Army career and her own service.

Vicki Hudson holds a MFA from St. Mary's College. Her narrative essays and poetry reflect experiences as a soldier and disabled veteran with several wartime tours of duty and her perspective as one of the first out LGBT unit commanders. She often merges text with images to create visual stories.

M.L. Doyle has served in the US Army at home and abroad for more than three decades as both a soldier and civilian and calls on those experiences in much of her writing. Her award-winning military-based mystery series as well as her coauthored memoirs are all about celebrating women who wear combat boots.

Mariette Katharine Kalinowski is a former sergeant in the US Marine Corps. She deployed to Iraq in 2005 and 2008. She earned her MFA in fiction from Hunter College in 2014. Her story "The Train" appears in Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War. She is currently working on her first novel.

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February 7–10, 2024
Kansas City, Missouri

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