National Book Foundation

[National Book Foundation]

For Women’s History Month, we’re bringing you #Women Write the World, daily posts of National Book Award honored women authors whose nonfiction writing on matters here and abroad set new standards for American expository literature.

A few weeks after 9/11, Megan K. Stack, a twenty-five-year-old national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, was thrust into Afghanistan and Pakistan, dodging gunmen and prodding warlords for information. From there, she traveled to war-ravaged Iraq and Lebanon and other countries scarred by violence, including Israel, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen.

Her account of what she saw in these combat zones and beyond became the basis of Every Man in this Village is a a Liar: An Education in War, a National Book Award Nonfiction Finalist book in 2010.

[National Book Foundation]

This month, Vanity Fair puts its cultural spotlight on a new generation of war veterans– including 2014 National Book Award Winner Phil Klay and 2012 Finalist Kevin Powers– who have become the literary voices of the soldiers engaged in America’s ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. 

[National Book Foundation]

We’re a country that goes to war, and if we’re going to be good citizens, all of us, veterans and civilians alike, we should be able to talk about what the experience of war means, so we know what the hell we’re voting for, what we’re doing as a country.

Phil Klay, winner of the 2014 National Book Award for Fiction and a 2014 5 Under 35 Honoree, in an interview with Stars and Stripes