For the Reporter
Phil Klay, an award-winning author, visits Green River College next week as part of the school’s One Book series.
Klay, a 2014 National Book Award winner for fiction, appears at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 12 in the Student Affairs Building on campus, 12401 SE 320th St., Auburn.
Klay – a Dartmouth College gradate and U.S. Marine Corps veteran – served in Iraq’s Anbar Province from January 2007 to February 2008 as a public affairs officer. After being discharged he went to Hunter College (New York City) and received a masters of fine arts.
His story, “Redeployment”, was originally published in Granta and is included in “Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War”. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Granta, Tin House, and elsewhere.
In 2014 Klay’s short story collection, “Redeployment”, won the National Book Award for fiction.
He described his time in the military as “a very mild deployment.” He said that he wrote his collection of short stories based on his service and return to civilian life
Klay’s “Redeployment” takes readers to the front lines of the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, asking us to understand what happened there and what happened to the soldiers who returned. Interwoven with themes of brutality and faith, guilt and fear, helplessness and survival, the characters in these stories struggle to make meaning out of chaos.
“It’s the best thing written so far on what the war (in Iraq) did to people’s souls,” according to Dexter Filkins, in his New York Times book review.
The program is free to GRC students with student ID, $10 for the general public.
Sign up online at greenriver.edu/campus-life.
The Student Activities Board of Green River College is sponsoring the event.
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LINK: More on Phil Klay online
