Voices From War – OPEN HOUSE – Sunday, FEB 12th!
Tag Archives: literature
Happy Holidays! And our END-OF-YEAR APPEAL!
Dear Friends, Colleagues, and Supporters!
Greetings! with warm wishes for this holiday season and a fulfilling and happy new year ahead! It has been a busy and exciting season at Voices From War, culminating earlier this month with our fabulous WINTER READING! Another CONGRATULATIONS to our writers and the skill with which they shared their stories on December 10th. All ten readers were participants this fall in our Voices From War workshop hosted by the 14th Street Y in Manhattan. And it was also exciting to welcome a group of participants attending from our collaboration in the Bronx!
As we wrap up the year, thinking back and looking forward, we offer thanks to all of you who have supported Voices From War in so many ways this year, with your time, your words and deeds, your valuable contributions. If you have not made a donation to Voices From War this year, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to help support our workshops and programming. We cannot offer our signature quality instruction and engaging readings without you – our supporters, our audience, all of you, both veterans and civilians, who care about the stories our veterans have to tell and the community in which discussions, reading, and writing grow.
A few highlights from 2016!
Tango on the Balcony: We continued partnering with independent short film Tango on the Balcony, including screenings in NYC and multiple international awards (check out their web page for updates!)
Library of America – WW1 Centennial commemorations: We continued our participation with the Library of America’s exciting program honoring American involvement in WWI – World War I and America, a 2-year initiative with lots happening in 2017 (be sure to check for updates and programming news!)
Including a list of books (and music) written by veterans…
The INTREPID Sea, Air & Space Museum: On November 14th, we were thrilled to run a stand-alone Voices From War writing workshop (part of Intrepid After Hours) on the historic Intrepid!
The Rona Jaffe Foundation: We are grateful for new grant support from the Rona Jaffe Foundation!
Poets & Writers: We are grateful for continued support from Poets & Writers’ Readings & Workshops program! You can also read a short piece about part of my (Kara’s) personal story in Poets & Writers Magazine (Nov/Dec 2016).
Publication News!
Nate Bethea (14th Street Y co-instructor, 2014-16) published several pieces in the New York Times this year (plus, read on for book news)…
Jeremy Warneke (The Craft of War Writing – Bronx collaboration) has published a number of personal essays, including for Task & Purpose and Intersections International…
Jeff Loeb (instructor in 2015 for our Bronx Vet Center collaboration and ongoing participant) published a multi-part memoir piece in War, Literature, & the Arts this fall…
Participant, John LoSasso (Bronx: The Craft of War Writing), had a short story accepted for publication in Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors, Vol. 5…
CONGRATULATIONS to our instructors and all of our participants on their writing accomplishments!
In the NEW YEAR, we’ll be working to bring you a better forum on the website for keeping up with Voices From War participants’ published work, as well as more opportunities to share what they’ve been writing!
COMING UP!
NYU Military Family Clinic: A Voices From War workshop during FAMILY DAY on January 28th
Open House at the 14th Street Y – SAVE THE DATE: February 12th
Season 8 – Voices From War’s writing workshop at the 14th Street Y – Starts FEB 28th – REGISTRATION Opens in January
Season 3 – The Craft of War Writing in the Bronx – Starts again in March 2017 – Details & Registration coming soon
Plus, in the community: JAN 10th at the STRAND BOOKS – Don’t miss the NYC Book Launch of THE ROAD AHEAD: Stories from the Forever War, ed. by Adrian Bonenberger and Brian Castner, which includes work from Voices From War instructor Nate Bethea and past Voices From War participants, including Kristen Rouse (founder of NYC Veterans Alliance) and Teresa Fazio, with contributions from esteemed writers we’ve been thrilled to welcome as guests to the Voices classroom, including… art work from veteran-writer Ben Busch and with an introduction by acclaimed novelist (SPARTA) Roxana Robinson — and many other fantastic veteran writers! (Plus, you can also find new work from Teresa Fazio in the exciting new anthology RETIRE THE COLORS, ed. by Dario DiBattista.)
THANK YOU to Nate Bethea for his two and a half years of dedication as co-instructor at the 14th Street Y! And THANK YOU to Jeremy Warneke for a fabulous first year of collaboration – The Craft of War Writing in the Bronx! THANK YOU to the Morris Park Public Library and the Bronx Council on the Arts for support for The Craft of War Writing; and THANK YOU for support in Manhattan from our host the 14th Street Y!
YOUR SUPPORT and tax-deductible DONATIONS MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
We hope you will consider making a tax-deductible contribution as we close 2016, or even a monthly recurring donation throughout 2017, whatever your giving level.
THANK YOU to each of you for your support for Voices From War and veteran stories!
Here’s to a healthy and fulfilling 2017!
Warm wishes,
Kara
Kara Krauze
kara@voicesfromwar.org
Founder, Director
Voices From War
Writing Workshops for Veterans
VoicesFromWar.org
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The Craft of War Writing – Voices From War collaboration – BRONX, NY
Voices From War – Season 5 at the 14th Street Y – Starts Tonight!
Excited for more great discussions as we begin our THIRD YEAR of workshops:
http://goo.gl/forms/QdOLknkzHz
STARTS JUNE 30th… 
Summer Mini-Season
Summer Mini-Season 2015: June 30th, July 7th, 21st, 28th
ONLINE REGISTRATION HERE
Short Link: http://goo.gl/forms/gLHn8DIio4
QUESTIONS? Contact: info@voicesfromwar.org
To take the unknown and discover what we know
Tuesday, January 20th, 2015
Friends and Colleagues,
Today is the FINAL DAY of our Voices From War INDIEGOGO FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN and the last chance to make a difference on this campaign. Now is the time—for any last minute sharing with friends and to contribute if you can.
A donation of any size is appreciated—each show of support makes a difference.
And there are still some great perks remaining!
THANK YOU to all of you who have contributed, through your online donations, by sharing our Appeal with others, by valuing Voices From War’s programming—valuing veterans and their stories—and letting us know in so many ways.
We will continue to update you on upcoming events, publication of our first collection of participant work in Voices from War, Volume 1, and other interesting news, writing tips, and thoughts on veterans’ stories and writing.
At Voices From War, we understand…
Through writing we are offered a means to create something bigger than the parts from which it is made. To take what we think we know, and find the unknown. Or the inverse: to take the unknown and discover what we know.
Each voice matters.
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“Recently, I have come to see that while we will change whether or not we want to, our history – what we’ve inherited from others, and from ourselves – doesn’t change. Our task is not to wipe a difficult history away and start fresh, but to get right with it.”
– Peter Mountford, from “A Table Set for the Past and the Future”
Don’t forget to sign up for our blog—plus keep an eye on our Facebook page (and “Like” it if you haven’t already).
Our Indiegogo Appeal ends tonight at midnight!
You can view again on Indiegogo what Voices From War has accomplished in our first year-and-a-half of workshops—and what we’re planning next with the help of our supporters and participants, our VOICES From War.
REGISTRATION and Class Details for the Winter-Spring 2015 Voices From War (NYC, Season 4) workshop available on the website.
The Voices From War OPEN HOUSE & SOCIAL is Tuesday, FEBRUARY 3rd – RSVP to info@voicesfromwar.org
Indiegogo: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/voices-from-war/x/8978084
Voices From War workshop details (Winter-Spring 2015): https://voicesfromwar.org/workshop/
Thank you!
All the best,
Kara
Kara Krauze
Founder, Director
Voices From War
Writing Workshops for Veterans
VoicesFromWar.org
Weekends & News
SATURDAY, JANUARY 17th, 2015
Weekends are the ideal time for lazy readings of the 
newspaper, a new book or a favorite old one. And weekend days offer time to catch up. We have news about our Winter-Spring 2015 NYC workshop… and our Voices From War fundraiser, with only 3 days to go!
You may have missed some of the exciting perks available through the Voices From War fundraiser – and they’re only available until January 20th!
*FICTION from Vietnam veteran (& publisher of Blue Heron Books) Bathsheba Monk * MEMOIR with HISTORY on the Cold War by writer Mary Lawlor * A year’s worth of fantastic WRITING from TIN HOUSE Magazine (only one subscription left!) * And more GREAT PERKS! *
There’s not much time left!
We send citizens to war, we welcome them home—and now we ask not for silence but for complicated experiences put into words. Now we listen.
If you want to show your support for Voices From War’s free writing workshops for 
veterans and help make possible our first publication, Voices from War, Volume 1, showcasing the stories of participants from the first year of Voices From War, please consider making a modest donation.
And please share our appeal with others who care about veterans and about writing.
(THANK YOU if you have already given! And if you have shared news about Voices From War!)
You can read about our progress and success stories—
and what Voices from War strives to do—here:
http://igg.me/at/VoicesfromWar
We have only 3 DAYS left to reach our Indiegogo goal!
Don’t forget to refer your friends and colleagues through the Indiegogo site, via social media, or by sharing this email!
Any questions, suggestions, introductions, or collaborations—please reach out to info@voicesfromwar.org.
With thanks,
Kara
Kara Krauze
Founder, Director
Voices From War
Writing Workshops for Veterans
VoicesFromWar.org
Women Veterans Empowerment Day
A decade of war—stories shape history
Who should tell us about the experiences of a decade of war? Veteran voices need to be part of the national dialogue, cultural and literary, on what it means to go to war; reminding all of us of the multiple perspectives, complex feelings and experiences of serving and fighting.
History is shaped by the accounts that emerge in the living years following historic events, including events we may perceive as less ‘historic’—individual accounts of departing, serving, waiting (whether a spouse back home or a soldier waiting for deployment), and return.
Stories—whether true accounts in the form of essays or memoir, or fictional narratives born of lived truths—shape how all of us see, how we remember. Stories create bridges of understanding, among veterans and between veterans and civilians.
“The autumn countryside around them felt gloomy and forlorn at this hour. The train which was to take both Masha and Ivanov to their homes was somewhere far off in grey space. There was nothing to divert or comfort a human heart except another human heart.”
– Andrey Platonov, “The Return” *
From the past, we learn about the present; and from the present we inform the future.
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*"The Return," by Andrey Platonov, from The Return and Other Stories, by Andrey Platonov, transl. by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler and Angela Livingstone; reprinted in Let's Call the Whole Thing Off: Love Quarrels from Anton Chekhov to ZZ Packer, selected by Kasia Boddy, Ali Smith, and Sarah Wood, © 2009.
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** A huge THANK YOU to Poets & Writers and The New York State Council on the Arts for supporting another season of Voices from War, A Writing Workshop for Veterans. And an ongoing THANK YOU to the 14th Street Y, supporter and sponsor, welcoming the workshop and its participants each week; and building Voices from War. **
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Start telling your story.
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REGISTRATION open for Voices from War’s Writing Workshop for Veterans – Winter-Spring 2014.
Come work on your story in a supportive community of fellow vets.
Space Limited.
Next Class (#3 of Season 2): Feb. 23rd.
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Telling a true story—through facts or fiction
Writing things down, telling a true story or turning it into fiction, helps us make sense of complex or fragmented memories and experiences. By looking back, writers are moving forward. Sharing experiences opens up possibilities for dialogue, between individuals and more broadly, in communities and nationally.
Whether we write for ourselves, our friends and family, or with the intent of reaching a wider audience, putting words on paper matters. We are communicating; we are building community; we are acknowledging the past and building the future.
“From the events of war he had wrested the lonely elements of maturity. He wanted, now, discoveries to which he sensed himself accessible; that would alter him, as one is altered, involuntarily, by a great work of art or an effusion of silent knowledge.”
– Shirley Hazzard
From The Great Fire, by Shirley Hazzard, ©2003
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Start telling your story.
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OPEN HOUSE— SUNDAY, JANUARY 26th—NYC
4:00-6:00pm
RSVP – info@voicesfromwar.org
344 East 14th Street, NYC
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REGISTRATION open for Voices from War’s Writing Workshop for Veterans – Winter-Spring 2014.
Come work on your story in a supportive community of fellow vets.
__________
Writing about war—history became personal
Historian and World War II veteran William Manchester writes about the urge to revisit his own memories of service during World War II, after working and writing as a historian of the era for years:
“The dreams started after I flung my pistol into the Connecticut River. It was mine to fling: I was, I suppose, the only World War II Marine who had had to buy his own weapon.”
“For years I had been trying to write about the war, always in vain. It lay too deep; I couldn’t reach it. But I had known it must be there. A man is all the people he has been. …[L]ike most of my countrymen, I am prone to search for meaning in the unconsummated past.”
“…I couldn’t define what I sought….”
– William Manchester
From Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War, ©1979
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What’s your story?
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REGISTRATION open for Voices from War’s Writing Workshop for Veterans – Winter-Spring 2014.
Come work on your story in a supportive community of fellow vets.
__________
Reading, Writing & Talking War—more event details
“READING, WRITING & TALKING WAR”
Coming up on Friday, November 8th, at 8:00 p.m., in FIT’s Katie Murphy Amphitheatre in NYC.
Check out the exciting writers participating below!
Scaled ticketing available: $10, $15, $25 (open seating).
Free tickets available for veterans and students, and reserved comp tickets on request.
For any complimentary ticketing, please contact…
jordan@veteranartistprogram.org
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Stories act as a powerful bridge between civilians and veteran experience. On November 8th, through the readings and panel in “Reading, Writing & Talking War,” literary discussions will intersect with veteran discussions – an occasion for readers and writers, civilians and veterans.
Illustrious writer Roxana Robinson, author of deeply engaged and affecting novels like Cost, about a family facing a son’s heroin addiction, and her new work Sparta, drawing us into the life of a soldier just returned from Iraq, will be reading alongside four amazing writers who are veterans.
Maurice Decaul served in Iraq and went on to get a B.A. in History from Columbia and is now pursuing his MFA in Poetry at NYU. In addition to being a powerful poet, he is a major contributor to Vijay Iyer (2013 MacArthur winner) and Mike Ladd’s new album, Holding It Down: The Veterans’ Dreams Project, an intoxicating fusion of jazz and hip-hop.
Mariette Kalinowski, completing her MFA at Hunter and instructing a new crop of writers, is a probing writer of short fiction, on display in her story “The Train,” included in the anthology Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War. She deployed twice to Iraq and is at work on what will surely be an amazing novel, illuminating the female veteran experience.
J.A. Moad II, a former Air Force pilot, who continues to fly commercially from his home base in Minnesota, has been a professor of war literature, educating fellow soldiers and veterans in the power of literature to enlighten and inform. While at work on an exciting novel, he also serves as fiction editor with War, Literature and the Arts, actively engaged in presenting new voices on the complicated subject of war.
Jacob Siegel, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, who continues to serve in the National Guard, is editor of The Hero Project at The Daily Beast, a singular and important voice for dialogue on veterans, national politics, heroes and literature. His own prose, tightly crafted and powerful in its evocation of veteran experience, will be on display in his novel-in-progress, and has already appeared in national publications and in the story “Smile, There are IEDs Everywhere” in Fire and Forget, which he co-edited. Jake co-teaches Voices from War, a writing workshop for veterans, with writer and educator…
…Kara Krauze, who will be moderating the discussion with these five diverse voices during our evening of “Reading, Writing & Talking War.”
Follow this link to go straight to online details and ticketing:
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/producer/446813
Be sure to check out the full week of events, veteran-focused and arts-focused, during the Veteran Artist Program’s Arts & Service Celebration, November 2nd – 9th:
http://vap-nyc.org/
AND, come RSVP on FACEBOOK:
https://www.facebook.com/events/663154410384776/
Event brought to you by… http://vap-nyc.org
Veteran Artist Program
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Voices From War 