The best new and established voices from the Forever Wars! Thirty-six prize-winning works of 21st century war poetry, fiction, and non-fiction!Since 2016, administered by the Chicago-based literary journal Line of Advance, the Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Awards have served to highlight not only some of the best contemporary voices writing about modern wars-Vietnam to Afghanistan-but to creatively commemorate the life of a U.S. Army leader and writer, beloved by his family and troops.In 2020, the annual competition expanded to include the voices of writers who are immediate family members of those serving, or who have served, in the U.S. military.Finalists are awarded cash-prizes, and publication in Line of Advance. Many have gone on to write and publish larger works, including award-winning novels and poetry collections. Past Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Award winners and finalists include:Eric Chandler: U.S. Air Force Academy graduate, former F-16 fighter pilot over Iraq and Afghanistan, outdoor sports writer, and author of the 2017 poetry collection Hugging This Rock: Poems of Earth & Sky, Love & War.U.S. Marine Corps veteran, winner of the inaugural Syracuse University Press Veterans' Writing Award for best book-length fiction or non-fiction, and author of the forthcoming novel Revolutions of All Colors.Travis Klempan: U.S. Naval Academy graduate, Iraq War veteran, and author of the novel Have Snakes, Need Birds.Ray McPadden: U.S. Army Ranger veteran, winner of the American Library Association's W.Y. Boyd Award for Excellence in Military Fiction, and author of the novel And the Whole Mountain Burned.Bill Upton, U.S. Army veteran, a former crew chief on C-7A "Caribou" aircraft over Vietnam, and author of the memoir Pizza and Mortars: Ba-muoi-ba & Body Bags.

Our Best War Stories: Prize-winning Poetry & Prose from the Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Awards

Literature & Fiction

Lyke, Christopher

United States

Middle West Press LLC

PUSHCART-NOMINATED FICTION ABOUT POST-9/11 AMERICA FROM AN AMERICAN VETERAN\nWhile America carried on with Pax Americana, a generation of men were asked to watch children suffer without as much as a flinch, then return home and continue as America has for decades.\nWhen the men returned, they brought with them unexpected cargo that is shaping the future of America in unintended ways. In The Chicago East India Company, a series of short stories and vignettes walk the reader through the consequences of two decades of war, and the attitudes it creates.\nAn eighteen-year-old realizes his mortality and is punished for it by his peers; 
A soldier returns from the wars only to realize he’s teaching the colonized in his own city; 
A young couple go to Central America and see the effects of the West on class and opportunity; 
Members of a platoon hunt to find a traitorous Afghan spy; 
A man spends his days adhering to a strict and ridiculous routine to ward off the bad magic that is always around the corner.\nLyke’s setting shifts in time and place but forever casts the main character of The Chicago East India Company as someone trying to maintain his sanity, his humanity, and his kindness as the state and its bureaucratic inefficiencies unknowingly try to take them away.\nIn the tradition of Camus, Orwell or Steinbeck, Lyke’s work illuminates human nature and seeks the truth hidden under layers of grit.

The Chicago East India Company

Literary

Double Dagger Books

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Books by Lyke, Christopher