As of July 1, 2026, we’ll be indefinitely pausing publication of our biannual literary journal, As You Were: The Military Review. We’ll be exploring different ways to continue the mission as we maintain important infrastructure. Our previously published material will always be available right here.
This site is a special place. Here are the results of the endeavor that Military Experience and the Arts, Inc., has been engaged in for well over a decade. Originally envisioned by our founder Travis L. Martin in 2013, this organization has served as a space where veterans and military family members could share their truth, whatever that was and however they wished to express it. That space took on several different forms. There were symposiums that brought together creators and facilitators, online generative writing workshops, and – our main effort – the curation of publications. In all, there were five titles: The Journal of Miliary Experience, Blue Streak: A Journal of Military Poetry, The Blue Falcon Review: A Journal of Military Fiction, Blue Nostalgia: A Journal of Post-Traumatic Growth, and, finally, As You Were: The Military Review, which served as a consolidation that covered all the genres and allowed for the continued mentorship and publication of writers, poets, and artists.
Garnering the material for As You Were followed a simple model: Writers sent their best work, and our editors helped them ready it for its presentation to the public. Sometimes this meant an editor teaching basics of narrative construction or more effective techniques. Other times they’d offer some nuanced perspective or even just a recognition that something really worked. Often it was somewhere in between. There were conversations, experiments, and illuminations that played out in draft after draft. Some folks found their voices. A great many spoke for those who couldn’t. Some made sense of parts of their past. Others found a path for their future. Over a thousand of them were published here.
The material, though, was always secondary. It was the people that mattered most. On the other end of every submission or email was a human being with an experience that was important. Perhaps they’d trudged up mountains in Vietnam, patrolled the Euphrates Valley, or said goodbye to a parent or a child on yet another deployment. Regardless, they felt the meaning of having an association with the military. Our staff sought to serve them by helping them to connect that part of themselves with the broader human community, whether that was with the editor discussing their piece or with the audience reading or seeing their work. It was always about building bridges to empathetic spaces through creative expression. Those bridges are here, within these publications, and we welcome you to journey across them and learn from the people who have painstakingly shared their thoughts and feelings.
We are ever grateful for the efforts of the contributors and editors that have made all of this possible. We’re especially thankful for you, the audience who is here to engage with our work. We hope you find it as meaningful and impactful as we have.
–
–
–
–
–