In an effort to change the way the war is represented and brought back home (from the usual mainstream media, bloggers, documentaries, etc.), the National Endowment for the Arts sponsored a program several years ago linking prominent writers with soldiers who had returned from both Iraq and Afghanistan in order to tell the stories that you don't normally hear. The end-product was a book that's been getting a lot of hype since it's release...

A new film, Operation Homecoming, is now bringing that collection of writings to life--an anthology of poems, essays, e-mails, letters written by soldiers. The New York Times has two articles that are worth checking out... eg. Tobias Wolff makes a fairly scathing remark against the public, citing indifference as "a sign of a really decadent civilization." (NYTimes, Feb 9, 2007)

It's an interesting take and commentary on how we're used to thinking about representing war--where are the soldiers in all of this? Where do they fit into all of this?

*the other article Trying to Make the Pen as Mighty as the Sword was published in Aug. 2004