Phil Klay

Klay served as a U.S. Marine Corps public affairs officer during the Iraq War's Anbar Province deployment from 2007 to 2008, then earned an MFA at Hunter College while turning that experience into fiction.

Redeployment (2014) collects twelve stories narrated by a rotating cast of veterans and support personnel (infantrymen, a chaplain, a mortuary affairs specialist, a foreign service officer), each grappling differently with combat's violence and an often harder homecoming; it won the National Book Award, becoming one of the defining literary works of the Iraq War.

Klay has continued writing fiction and essays on war, faith, and American foreign policy, including the novel Missionaries, and teaches creative writing while remaining a prominent commentator on veterans' issues.