Past Event

Talking Service: An Afternoon with Brian Turner

Poet and Author Brian TurnerJoin us at the Carbondale Public Library for a reading and discussion by poet and veteran Brian Turner. Come hear selections from his poetry and his recent memoir, My Life as a Foreign Country, and stick around for a conversation about writing about military service. This event is free and open to the public.

Brian Turner is a poet and memoirist who served seven years in the US Army, including tours of duty in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Iraq. He is the author of two poetry collections, Phantom Noise and Here, Bullet, which won the New York Times “Editor’s Choice” selection and other major national awards. Turner‘s work has been published in National Geographic, the New York Times, Poetry Daily, Harper’s Magazine, and other fine journals. His recent memoir, My Life as a Foreign Country, has been called, “achingly, disturbingly, shockingly beautiful.”

Prizes! Refreshments! Reading & discussion!

This event is part of Illinois Humanities Talking Service: A Veterans Discussion Group series.

If you require ASL interpretation or other assistance to fully participate in this program, please contact info@ilhumanities.org at least 72 hours prior to the program so that we can make accommodations. For more information, please call (312) 422-5580.

More on Talking Service

Talking Service, presented in partnership with the Great Books Foundation, will provide an opportunity for veterans to share their military and post-military experiences with one another through reading and discussion of literature. It is open to veterans of all ages, genders, and branches of the service, whether they served in war or in peacetime.

Discussions will draw upon brief readings selected from Standing Down: From Warrior to Civilian (Great Books Foundation, 2013), a collection of literature that relates to military and post-military life. The selections will include a wide variety of writings by Ernest Hemingway, Walt Whitman, Estela Portillo Trambley, Leo Tolstoy, Siobhan Fallon, and other authors. The readings for each meeting will address a particular theme, such as “homecoming,” “caregiving,” or “moral judgments.”