Outstanding Summer Reads

These are some of the wonderful books I've been able to read this summer.


Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn
The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jameson
Life Work by Donald Hall
Child of God by Cormac McCarthy
Constellation of Genius 1922: Modernism Year One by Kevin Jackson
This Connection of Everyone with Lungs by Juliana Spahr

Essay in Grantland

Thanks to Rafe Bartholomew and Bill Simmons for taking my piece for Grantland

Essay in The Rumpus

Thank you to the editors at The Rumpus for publishing my essay "First-Class Guilt."

Poems in Connotation Press

Thank you to John Hoppenthaler who kindly asked for some poems to be featured in his "A Poetry Congeries" on Connotation Press.  View them here

Akron-Beacon Journal

Thanks to Jim Carney for writing this generous piece in the AKBJ. 

Chautauqua Reading

Had a great time this past week at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York.  It was humbling to be around so many--I say this very sincerely--geniuses who were at the top of their fields.  Here is a piece Kelsey Burritt wrote about the book.

Interview on Iowa Public Radio

 Thank you to Iowa Public Radio for interviewing me and two other veterans about this war.  It was great to also hear Randy Brown and Lem Genovese.


Listen here

Reading at Chautauqua Institution

Excited to be reading this summer at the Chautauqua Institution's conference in July.  They chose my book as a Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle (CLSC) selection for the first week of July under the theme: "The Next Greatest Generation."  I'll be reading July 4, 2013, at the Hall of Philosophy at the Institution. 

See Info Here

Interview for Devil's Lake

Thanks to my friend, Jacques Rancourt, for taking the time to interview me about the new book.  If you're a soldier or former-soldier, do you have thoughts on this unwritten "rule" I speak of?  I know upon returning home, what you did over there and how much you left the wire mattered a lot; it was not something you embellished or exaggerated at all.  This translated to my writing and overall, I shy away from writing about any experience in Iraq that I wasn't directly involved in.  In the future, maybe I will write about Fallujah or Abu Ghraib...

Essay on the Ten-Year "Anniversary" of Iraq War

James Dao at The New York Times asked me to write a short reflection about what I was doing ten years ago as we invaded Iraq.  Like many people, I wasn't doing anything interesting, though, a year later, I would go to Iraq myself.  If, like me, you've been following major media outlets this week, there has been an oversaturation of soldiers and veterans reflecting on where they were ten years ago as the war began.  We should be aware that the Iraqi perspective is lacking, as it always has been, in most of our media and culture.  In short, Americans watched it on TV and Iraqis sat in their homes without power as bombs dropped near their homes, and in many cases, on their homes.  I've been reading Anthony Shadid's Night Draws Near which intimately discusses the lives of many Iraqis as the war began in Iraq in 2003.  It is a wonderful book that very much looks at the war from the Iraqi perspective.


Anyway, you can read my article here (it delves into reasons why war was desirable to a 19 year-old like me, though mostly it is just a simple reflection on what I was doing as we invaded.  I hope at least the many essays and articles like these begin more dialogue and thought concerning the wars).

Interview on The Takeaway

Please check out this interview I did for The Takeaway with John Hockenberry for the 10-year mark of the Iraq War.

Listen Here

Reading in Tempe

Excited to be reading with my former teacher, Sally Ball, at Changing Hands in Tempe, Arizona.  See the reading schedule for more details.

Website for the book is up!

Check out the website promoting The Stick Soldiers, which comes out soon:

Book Launch, AWP

Excited to announce I will be doing a book launch with Greg Wrenn at AWP in Boston.  Info below:


Book Launch for Greg Wrenn's Centaur and Hugh Martin’s The Stick Soldiers (BOA Press) on Friday, March 8 at 6 PM at the Globe Bar and Cafe (565 Boylston St), a half-block from the Copley T stop and a 15 minute walk from the Sheraton Boston.

New Poems on Blackbird

Check out this really great issue of Blackbird that has some poems from my new book.  They always have a wonderful variety of new and established poets.

Read the Poems Here

The Stick Soldiers on Amazon

Very excited to see the book showing on Amazon with the Cornelius Eady foreword..

The Stick Soldiers

Poem in The New Republic

A big thank you to Henri Cole, who published a poem from my new book in The New Republic.

Read the poem Here

Interview on AWP Website

 Thanks to Daniel D'Angelo for writing this piece on the AWP webpage:


Read the Interview Here

Honored to be a current Stegner Fellow

After orientation at Stanford, they took these headshots of us near the quad.


List of Current Stegner Fellows

PBS Newshour Interview

 PBS Newshour was kind enough to write an article about the Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award that I recently won from the Iowa Review:


Read PBS Newshour Article