New Series Of Operation Homecoming Writing Workshops

U.S. Armed Forces active duty troops and veterans of both current and past conflicts will have an in-depth opportunity to reflect on their service through the National Endowment for the Arts' groundbreaking initiative Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience. For the first time, Operation Homecoming will invite veterans as well as active duty troops to participate in progressive, four-to-six-week writing workshops at 25 sites around the country. The new phase of Operation Homecoming is the first instance in which the NEA will hold writing workshops at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical centers, military hospitals, and affiliated centers in communities around the country. St. Louis VA Medical Center in Missouri and Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC, served as pilot sites for the new phase of the program, and both facilities will host workshops this summer.

Nationally acclaimed writers, such as Andrew Carroll, Tobias Wolff, Jeff Shaara, and Marilyn Nelson, will lead sessions. In an extraordinary opportunity to build closer ties between local and military communities, local literary organizations and writers will partner with many of the workshop sites. The NEA collaborated with the Department of Veterans Affairs as well as the Department of Defense to develop current Operation Homecoming activities. Operation Homecoming is made possible with support from The Boeing Company.

As evidence of the literary achievement of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, the Arts Endowment has added three new faculty members who served in the conflicts: playwright Ryan Kelly, poet Brian Turner, and journalist Nathaniel Fick. Matthew Eck, author of the novel The Farther Shore and an Army veteran who served in Somalia and Bosnia; Vietnam War veteran Robert Timberg, editor of the U.S. Naval Institute's Proceedings magazine and author of The Nightingale's Song; and Kristin Henderson, a military spouse and author of While They're at War, are other new faculty members.

To facilitate the multi-week workshops, the NEA has partnered with the Southern Arts Federation to offer each participant free materials to aid the writing process, including a guide for writers. The guide was edited by project consultant Andrew Carroll, a noted expert on wartime correspondence and editor of the Operation Homecoming anthology. The guide offers advice on writing and samples of notable wartime writing by veterans, civilians, and Operation Homecoming contributors. Participants also will receive a CD of audio recordings of war literature from the Civil War to the Vietnam War. Each participant also will receive a copy of the documentary film Muse of Fire, which chronicles the Operation Homecoming writing process with participants and their writing instructors. Workshop host sites will receive copies of the Operation Homecoming anthology for use as reference materials during the workshops.

Workshop sites and participation

The 2008 Operation Homecoming writing workshops are free and open to active duty troops and veterans, with a focus on those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military families may participate as allowed by host facilities. The initial workshops will be held in the following cities, with more workshops to be announced:

* VA Palo Alto Health Care System, Palo Alto, CA
* Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, DC
* Miami VA Healthcare System, Miami, FL
* St. Louis VA Medical Center, St. Louis, MO
* U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College, Marine Corps University, Quantico, VA

For more information on registration, dates and locations, visit http://www.operationhomecoming.org/.