Monday Mar 10, 2014
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
THE POWERHOUSE ARENA [Dumbo]
37 Main Street
Brooklyn, NY
11201
For more information, please call 718.666.3049
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Called “urgently necessary” by Karen Russell and “A writer of our times” by Colum McCann, Phil Klay’s short story collection about the soldiers’ experiences both in and out of war is bound to rivet and shock. Klay, an Iraq veteran and Hunter grad, will be joined in conversation by novelist Patrick McGrath.
About Redeployment:
From former marine captain and Iraq veteran Phil Klay, a brilliant and hard-hitting collection focusing on the complexities of life for soldiers on the front lines and after.
Phil Klay’s Redeployment takes readers to the front lines of the wars in 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.
In “Redeployment,” a soldier who has had to shoot dogs because they were eating human corpses must learn what it is like to return to domestic life in suburbia, surrounded by people “who have no idea where Fallujah is, where three members of your platoon died.” In “After Action Report,” a lance corporal seeks expiation for a killing he didn’t commit in order that his best friend be unburdened. A mortuary affairs marine tells about his experiences collecting remains—of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers both. A chaplain sees his understanding of Christianity, and his ability to provide solace through religion, tested by the actions of a ferocious colonel. And in the darkly comic “Money as a Weapons System,” a young Foreign Service officer is given the absurd task of helping Iraqis improve their lives by teaching them to play baseball. These stories reveal the intricate combination of monotony, bureaucracy, comradeship, and violence that make up a soldier’s daily life at war and the isolation, remorse, and sense of displacement that can accompany a soldier’s homecoming.
Redeployment is poised to become a classic in the tradition of war writing. Across nations and continents, Klay sets in devastating relief the two worlds a soldier inhabits: one of extremes and one of loss. Written with a hard-eyed realism and stunning emotional depth, this work marks Phil Klay as one of the most talented new voices of his generation.
About the Author and Contributor:
Phil Klay was born in White Plains, NY, and went to high school at the Jesuit school Regis High School, in New York City. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 2005, and was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Marine Corps. He deployed to Iraq with the 2nd Marine Logistics Group from January 2007 to February 2008. He left the Corps in July, 2009, and received his MFA from Hunter College, where he studied with Colum McCann and Peter Carey, and worked as Richard Ford’s research assistant. His first published story, “Redeployment”, appeared in Granta’s Summer 2011 issue. That story led to the sale of his forthcoming collection, which will be published in seven countries. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the New York Daily News, Tin House, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012.
Patrick McGrath is the author of several critically acclaimed novels, including Spider, Asylum, Martha Peake, Port Mungo, and Trauma. Three of his novels have been adapted into films, including David Cronenberg’s Spider in 2002, for which McGrath wrote the screenplay. Born in London, McGrath lives in New York.
For more information, please contact
Justin Levine
email: justin@powerhousearena.com
powerHouse Arena, 37 Main Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
tel: 212-604-9074 x109
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