Fiction is a place where people can meet, where they take the time to very seriously examine and think about the experiences of other people and about the sorts of moral decisions those characters are making.

I wrote some weird magical realism stories that are probably on some hard drive somewhere, and if I ever uncover that hard drive, I'll burn it. I tried to do a little bit of writing while I was in Iraq, but it wasn't the really greatest space for creative production.

Veteran art creates a meeting place between veterans and civilians, or simply between veterans with different experiences.

I think in America, especially today, our relationship to war is incredible distant. Yet narratives of war have such a primal power in this culture. They mainline directly into a whole series of emotional reactions and understandings of American patriotism, masculinity, and all of these other things.

Fiction is a place where people can meet, where they take the time to very seriously examine and think about the experiences of other people and about the sorts of moral decisions those characters are making.

It's not so much the question that offends me; it's that the people asking it don't seem to respect the moral seriousness of the question.

There are two ways to tell the story. Funny or sad. Guys like it funny, with lots of gore and a grin on your face when you get to the end. Girls like it sad, with a thousand-yard stare out to the distance as you gaze upon the horrors of war they can't quite see. Either way, it's the same story.