2010 War, Literature & the Arts Conference
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The 2010 War, Literature, and the Arts Conference will take place September 16th—18th, 2010, at the United States Air Force Academy.

This international conference will offer top-tier academic presentations and keynote speakers in a variety of genres to include literary and journalistic criticism, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, film studies, photography, painting and music. The thematic center of the conference is the representation and reporting of America’s wars from 1990 to present. This timeframe presents a compelling opportunity to focus on the near past as well as current engagements: topics and creative output that directly affect all Americans in the present.

 

Benjamin Busch was born in 1968 in Manhattan and grew up in rural central New York state. He graduated from Vassar College in 1991 with a major in Studio Art and soon thereafter accepted a commission in the United States Marine Corps. He served four years as an active duty infantry officer and then from 1996 until recently in the Selected Marine Reserve. He deployed to Iraq in 2003 as the Commanding Officer of Delta Company, 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion and then again in 2005 with a Civil Affairs unit in Ar Ramadi.

The images in his exhibits of photographs, The Art in War (2003) and Occupation (2005), are from these two deployments. In 2004, he began playing the role of Officer Anthony Colicchio on the HBO series The Wire, and has appeared in the HBO series, Generation Kill in Africa. His first film as a writer/director, Sympathetic Details, was released in February of 2008 along with a new exhibit of photographs, Abstract Matter. His essay "Bearing Arms: A Serious Boy at War" appeared in the February issue of Harper’s.

On the Tuesday before the conference Benjamin Busch will deliver the 4th Annual David L. Jannetta Distinguished Lecture in War, Literature & the Arts at the Air Force Academy.

Benjamin Busch and Frederick Busch interviewed by Scott Simon (2005)

Benjamin Busch interviewed by Scott Simon (2009)

Featured Speakers
click on images for more

Benjamin Busch

Actor/Photographer
"The Wire"
"Generation Kill"
 

Mark Boal is an American journalist and screenwriter. Valley of Elah, directed by Paul Haggis, was based on a 2004 article entitled “Death and Dishonor” penned by Boal. The story centered on the demise of Richard Davis, an Iraq War veteran who was murdered upon his return home in 2003. Mark Boal also wrote and produced the 2009 Iraq war thriller about an elite army EOD bomb squad, The Hurt Locker, with film director and business partner, Kathryn Bigelow. Boal has also written for The Village Voice, where he was a columnist, and Rolling Stone Magazine, where he is a contributing writer. Time magazine critic Richard Corliss described The Hurt Locker as "a near-perfect movie about men in war, men at work. Through sturdy imagery and violent action, it says that even Hell needs heroes...this one's the tops."

Mark Boal

Writer/Producer
"The Hurt Locker"
Oscar Winner -- Best Original Screenplay
Best Film
 

Brian Turner is an American poet and the winner of the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award for his debut collection, Here, Bullet, (Alice James Books) the first of many awards and honors received for this collection of poems about his experience as a soldier in the Iraq War. His honors since include a Lannan Literary Fellowship and NEA Literature Fellowship in Poetry, and the Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship.

He received his MFA from the University of Oregon. Turner is a United States Army veteran, and was an infantry team leader for a year in the Iraq War beginning November 2003, with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. In 1999 and 2000 he was with the 10th Mountain Division, deployed in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Turner has seen his poems published in The Cortland Review, Poetry Daily, Atlanta Review, Crab Orchard Review, Georgia Review, Rattle, Virginia Quarterly Review, and ZYZZYVA, and in anthologies including Voices in Wartime: The Anthology (Whit Press, 2005) and Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families (Random House, 2006).

Turner was also presented the 2nd Annual David L. Jannetta Distinguished Lecture in War, Literature, and the Arts at the United States Air Force Academy.

Brian Turner reads "Here, Bullet"

Brian Turner reads "The Hurt Locker"

Brian Turner

Poet
"Here Bullet"
"Phantom Noise"

Special Presentation
"Ian Fisher: American Soldier"
Denver Post Staff -- Tim Rasmussen, Craig F. Walker, Meghan Lyden

Please direct any questions to Jesse Goolsby at 2010wla@gmail.com