Phil Klay
Phil Klay
Phil Klayis an American writer and United States Marine officer who won the National Book Award for fiction in 2014 for his first book-length publication, a collection of short stories, Redeployment...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
genuinely interested perspective
It's often difficult to get perspective on your own stories, on your own experiences, without talking them through with someone who is genuinely interested in thinking about them. And that's the key.
graham school writers
Certainly, my exposure in high school to writers like Flannery O'Connor, Shusaku Endo, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Graham Greene was formative.
served war
I'm not anti-war. I served in a war, and I served proudly. But just or not, necessary or not, war is the industrial-scale slaughter of other humans.
boys family joined peace public service three tradition
There's a tradition of public service in my family. I'm one of three boys that joined the military. My father was in the Peace Corps.
good great tolstoy writer
A great writer is a great writer... Tolstoy was not a woman, but 'Anna Karenina' is still a pretty good book.
bad human incredibly
Bombs do very, very bad things to human bodies. It's incredibly shocking to see.
iraq left open proud successful whether
Certainly, when I'd left Iraq back in 2008, I'd been proud of my service, but whether we'd been successful or not was still an open question.
america ought tactic using violation
Even if torture works, what is the point of 'defending' America using a tactic that is a fundamental violation of what America ought to mean?
best
Fiction is the best way I know how to think something through.
corps home marine
For me, leaving the Marine Corps was more disorienting than returning home.
mild though
I don't want to act as though my deployment was particularly rough, because it wasn't. I had a very mild deployment; I was a staff officer.
junior marine officer school
I ended up going to Dartmouth, and I did Marine Officer Candidate School during my junior summer.
grew north school york
I grew up a little north of New York City and went to high school at Regis, an all-boys tuition-free high school in Manhattan.
highly
I have friends with post-traumatic stress - friends with post-traumatic stress who are, you know, highly successful, capable people.