Witnessing War

Witnessing War: About War and Writing

A Conversation with Matt Gallagher

Join us for a discussion about "boots on the ground" in contemporary American military conflict. Duke Divinity School student and veteran Naval Officer Giovanna Meek moderates this conversation with acclaimed author and Army veteran Matt Gallagher about his experiences being a soldier and a writer. As an officer in the Army, Gallagher served in Iraq from 2007 to 2009. During six months of that time, he also maintained, under a pseudonym, a popular blog, "Kaboom: A Soldier's War Journal," which was ultimately shut down by his superiors. Gallagher later published his blog as a memoir, and has continued to write about war in the form of newspaper commentaries, short stories, and his recently-published novel, Youngblood. In this conversation, Meek will talk with Gallagher about the moral and ethical dilemmas faced by soldiers on the ground, the military/civilian divide in the United States, and the reasons for using different genres to write about war.

Free and open to the public. Light lunch served. Copies of Youngblood are available for purchase at The Regulator Bookshop, 720 Ninth Street, Durham. On Monday evening, April 11 at 7 pm, Matt Gallagher and writer, Iraq war veteran, and active-duty Army officer Jessica Scott will be at The Regulator talking about how they write about war.

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"One day I woke up and could no longer wear my uniform. And then I could no longer go to the movies. And then I could no longer live in America. But of course trauma is everywhere. And so is suffering. War doesn’t have exclusive rights to these." —Robert Densmore, In Gratitude: Remembering War During a Pandemic, Forum Online