Helen Benedict joins me for a deeply personal conversation about her novel The Soldier’s House, our June It Has to Be Read. offering, and the realities behind America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
We discuss veterans, refugees, military culture, sexual violence inside the armed forces, and the emotional wreckage war leaves behind long after the headlines disappear.
The conversation also turns toward writing itself, journalism, publishing, and what it means to tell difficult truths in a culture that often looks away.
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LINKS
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Our June It Has to Be Read. offering,
The Soldier's House
on Bookshop
Shop the “It Has to Be Read.” Book Club List: https://bookshop.org/shop/frankschaeffer
Helen Benedict has been writing about refugees and war for many years, both in her three most recent novels, The Good Deed, Wolf Season and Sand Queen, and in her 2022 book of nonfiction, Map of Hope & Sorrow: Stories of Refugees Trapped in Greece. A recipient of the PEN/Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History, the Ida B. Wells Award for Bravery in Journalism, and the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, Benedict is also the author of The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq. Her writings inspired a class action suit against the Pentagon on behalf of those sexually assaulted in the military and the 2012 Oscar-nominated documentary The Invisible War. She is a professor at Columbia University in New York.