Workshops to focus on veterans, military

East Carolina University’s Contemporary Writer Series will host a three-day series of workshops for veterans, military service members and military families March 25 – 27.

All events are free and open to the public. The series will focus on expressing experiences through fiction, non-fiction or visual art. Participants may also wish to contribute to a new publication, The ECU Veterans Anthology.

Veteran poet and essayist Brian Turner will open the series at 7:30 p.m. March 25 in the East Carolina Heart Institute auditorium. Turner will read from his work and discuss his experiences as infantry team leader for the 3 rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team in Iraq from 2003-2004. He is the author of “Here Bullet” (2005), “Phantom Noise” (2010) and “My Life as a Foreign Country” (2014).

A book signing and question and answer session will immediately follow.

A poetry reading at 7 p.m. March 26 in the Greenville Museum of art will feature award-winning poet Ilyse Kusnetz and former North Carolina poet laureate Joseph Bathanti. A book signing and question and answer session will follow readings from both poets’ work.

Kusnetz teaches at Valencia College and lives in Orlando, Fla., with her husband, poet and memoirist Brian Turner. She holds a Ph.D. in feminist and postcolonial British literature from the University of Edinburgh and an M.A. in creative writing from Syracuse University. Bathanti is a professor of creative writing at Appalachian State University and the 2012 state poet laureate. His writings focus on veterans and their families. His honors include the Sam Ragan Fine Arts Award, the Carolina Novel Award and the Linda Flowers Literary Award from the N.C. Humanities Council.

A full listing of events and registration is available at http://www.eventbrite.com/e/veteran-writers-workshop-tickets-15846084064.

For additional information about the workshops, contact Jason Faulkner, teaching instructor in the Department of English, at 252-328-5177 or faulknerj@ecu.edu. For additional information about the events featuring Turner, Kusnetz or Bathanti, contact John Hoppenthaler, associate professor of English, at 252-328-5562; hoppenthalerj@ecu.edu, or Thomas Douglass, associate professor of English, at 252-328-6723; douglasst@ecu.edu.

The workshops are cosponsored by Operation Re-Entry North Carolina, Office of Student Transitions, Pirate Veterans and the Office of the Provost.