Syracuse Veterans’ Writing Group Veterans’ Day Reading

November 7, 2017 - 7:00 PM

When civilians say “thank you for service,” what does that expression mean to the veterans receiving that comment? What stories and experiences do veterans and military families have to share? Come out for an evening of reading and conversation from members of the Syracuse Veterans’ Writing Group.

Copies of the group’s recent book The Weight of My Armor (Parlor Press, 2017) will be available for sale.

The essays and poems in The Weight of My Armor represent the work of twenty-three members of the Syracuse Veterans’ Writing Group, which meets monthly on the Syracuse University campus. Since 2010, the group has served as an intergenerational community where veterans and military family members write about their lives in and beyond the military.

The Weight of My Armor offers creative nonfiction and poetry that spans a range of military experiences, including overseas deployments and combat, military acculturation and training, adventure and camaraderie, shock and loss, and endurance and survival. This collection also addresses aspects of the military experience that receive less public attention such as gender oppression and military sexual trauma, the long-term physical and psychological costs of warfare, the complex challenges of familial and social reintegration, and the experience of growing up in a military family.

A reception will follow the reading. Refreshments provided.

Co-sponsored by the Nonfiction Reading Series of the Department of Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition and the Moral Injury Project of Syracuse University and LeMoyne College.

Free and open to the public.