This is a partial clip from my C-Span BookTV interview. The talk took place at Porter Square books in Cambridge, and it was a talk about my newest book Civilianized: A Young Veteran’s Memoir, a book about my return home from the Iraq War.
In this clip I discuss soldiers who chase after awards and also that pesky question “how do I thank a veteran for their service?”
I had my wife take some promo pictures of the new book.
Here’s a round up of some of the publicity that my newest book: Civilianized: A Young Veteran’s Memoir, has received so far.
It’s a hard, sometimes difficult, tedious task, promoting and marketing a book, but it’s an important topic that I think has the opportunity to help a lot of veterans, so I’m going to keep trucking away…
Kate Tuttle, writing for the Boston Globe, wrote about Civilianized for her The Story Behind the Book column. She interviewed me about the writing process of the book and how it came about.
Kelly Lynn Thomas, writing for the Rumpus, did a write up for her This Week in Books column. She discussed the importance of war memoirs and war writing.
Litpick (a website made of high school book reviewers) posted a nice Youtube video review of the book on their booktube page, and a quick six question interview appeared on their website.
David Abrams, author of Fobbit, and owner of the blog The Quivering Pen, was nice enough to allow me to do a guest post of his “My First Time Experience,” where I shared a story about getting my first book deal.
20SomethingReads had a nice review of Civilianized that was posted today. Check it out if you get a chance.
Also, a few NPR radio interviews, but I don’t have the clips to those yet.
More to come soon, and if you have any tips/ideas for ways to spread the word about the book and the issues it discusses, please shoot me an email.
A quick Booktube review of my newest book: Civilianized: A Young Veteran’s Memoir.
If you’re in the Boston area tomorrow: January 5th, 2017, I’ll be doing a book talk, reading and Q & A at Porter Square books in Boston. I’ll be talking about my newest book: Civilianized: A Young Veteran’s Memoir.
Time: 7:00pm – 8:30pm.
Address:PORTER SQUARE BOOKS, 25 WHITE ST, CAMBRIDGE, MA 02140 | 617-491-2220 |
About:
I’ll be part of a Q & A with Chris Walsh, a distinguished writer, scholar and teacher from the Boston area. We’ll be discussing: War, PTSD, Reintegration, and the Writing Process.
“Anthony navigates the dark side of a veteran’s homecoming with honesty, skill, and even a touch of humor. Prepare to be disturbed and entertained in equal measures.” – Brian Castner, author of The Long Walk
After twelve months of military service in Iraq, Michael Anthony stepped off a plane, seemingly happy to be home or at least back on US soil. He was twenty-one years old, a bit of a nerd, and carrying a pack of cigarettes that he thought would be his last. Two months later, Michael was stoned on Vicodin, drinking way too much, and picking a fight with a very large Hell’s Angel. Civilianized is a memoir chronicling Michael’s search for meaning in a suddenly destabilized world.
Michael Anthony is a writer and veteran of the Iraq War. He spent six years in the army reserves, with a sixteen-month deployment—twelve months in Iraq—where he served as an operating room technician. After his service in Iraq, he earned a BA in English literature from Bridgewater State University, and an MFA in creative writing from Lesley University.
Coward. It’s a grave insult, likely to provoke anger, shame, even violence. But what exactly is cowardice? Bringing together sources from court-martial cases to literary and film classics such as Dante’s Inferno, The Red Badge of Courage, and The Thin Red Line, Cowardice recounts the great harm that both cowards and the fear of seeming cowardly have done, and traces the idea of cowardice’s power to its evolutionary roots. But Chris Walsh also shows that this power has faded, most dramatically on the battlefield. Misconduct that earlier might have been punished as cowardice has more recently often been treated medically, as an adverse reaction to trauma, and Walsh explores a parallel therapeutic shift that reaches beyond war, into the realms of politics, crime, philosophy, religion, and love.
Yet, as Walsh indicates, the therapeutic has not altogether triumphed–contempt for cowardice endures, and he argues that such contempt can be a good thing. Courage attracts much more of our attention, but rigorously understanding cowardice may be more morally useful, for it requires us to think critically about our duties and our fears, and it helps us to act ethically when fear and duty conflict.
Chris Walsh is Interim Director of the College of Arts and Sciences Writing Program at Boston University, where he teaches classes focused on the poetry of war. Walsh has also taught at Emerson College and the University of Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), and he is currently teaching “The War Memoir” at the Harvard University Extension School. His work has appeared in Civil War History, Foreign Affairs, the New Republic, The New York Times, Salon, and The Yale Review, among other places.