JME’s Micah Owen Featured in NYT’s “Warrior Voices”

Micah Owen’s harrowing tale of a convoy ambush in 2003 Fallujah appeared in the first Journal of Military Experience and was a recent addition to the New York Times “Warrior Voices” segment. Micah is twice a veteran of the Iraq War (2003 & 2005) and twice a contributor to the JME. Beginning his work in the first classroom of veteran authors that founded the JME, he now finds his work featured in national news outlets and is an inspiration to aspiring veteran authors.

Click on Micah’s picture below to read his story as well as those of other military authors:

Micah Owen served two tours in Iraq in the United States Army. Click on his image above to read his his JME 1 story, "Put the Truck in Gear and Drive" as part of the NYT's "Warrior Voices" segment.
Micah Owen served two tours in Iraq in the United States Army. Click on his image above to read his his JME 1 story, “Put the Truck in Gear and Drive” as part of the NYT’s “Warrior Voices” segment.

New York Times Features MEA Publications, Authors

The New York Times‘s Cecilia Capuzzi Simon recently highlighted the community-building, therapeutic outreach of Military Experience and the Arts in her article, WARRIOR VOICES: Veterans learn to write the words they could not speak. 

In the article, Simon features work from several MEA authors, including Micah Owen, holding these examples up alongside other veteran authors and communities such as Veterans Writing Project’s Ronn Capps and Kate Hoit, and Army of Dude’s Alex Horton:

Mr. Owen’s story for the class — his first attempt at writing, beyond song lyrics — is a dramatic account of his convoy being ambushed in Fallujah. It was published in the first volume of Mr. Martin’s Journal of Military Experience, and it was the first time Mr. Owen’s family had heard about his military service. “I hardly ever spoke about it with them,” he says. “This was a way for my family to know what I had done.”

After reading the story, his mother cried. Mr. Owen urged his father, a Vietnam veteran, to write down the experiences he had never spoken of. At first his father balked. But in the second volume of the journal, there are two Owen essays, one by father and one by son.

he article discusses the use of writing and art as a means of healing in the wake of recent wars with a specific focus on the communities being forged out of the common purpose of creative expression…Read more.