New first-year students received a copy of the selected text during your Advising and Registration Days session, giving you the opportunity to read the book by the start of your first semester at St. Cloud State. The purpose of this program is to provide a common academic experience for all new first-year students, which integrates both curricular and co-curricular activities throughout the year. In addition to events around the book at your New Student Orientation in August, many of you will use the book in at least one class you take during your first year, and all of you will have the opportunity to participate in a wide variety of programs throughout 2014-15 related to the book and issues it raises.
Your participation in the common reading program will:
Your Common Reading for 2014-15 is Fire and Forget by Roy Scranton and Matt Gallagher.
Long after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan end, their effects will continue to ripple across foreign policy, American culture, and, most profoundly, among those who served. We’ve been given snapshots of war in movies, television broadcasts, and news reports. But Fire and Forget provides a new perspective through stories by fifteen talented writers who were directly involved in the recent conflicts—front line soldiers, staff officers, and a military spouse. Fire and Forget captures the full spectrum of war and its aftermath—from Fort Hood to Fallujah, from humvees to family sedans. By putting readers in the boots—and the minds—of their characters, the authors convey the “truth” of war in a way that only fiction can. This book will open the doors to rich conversations you will experience as a college student at St. Cloud State University.
Roy Scranton, an Iraq veteran, was an artilleryman in the Army. His poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in Boston Review, The Massachusetts Review, Denver Quarterly, LIT, New Letters, the New York Times, and elsewhere. Matt Gallagher, is the author of the war memoir Kaboom, published in 2010 by Da Capo Press. A former Army captain who served fifteen months in Iraq, he’s currently an MFA candidate at Columbia University.
Fire and Forget home page: www.fireandforgetbook.com
Iraq/Afghanistan War Timeline
Interview with Matt Gallagher and Roy Scranton