Intended Audience
Journeys with the Dead and the Living in Viet Nam
Join award-winning writer Wayne Karlin as he recounts how the lives – and perhaps the souls – of First Lieutenant Homer Steedly, Jr. and Sergeant-medic Hoang Ngoc Dam became inextricably bound together when they met accidentally on a jungle path in Viet Nam and Homer shot and killed Dam. Karlin tells the moving story of how Homer and Dam’s family and village finally found peace and serenity when, with Karlin’s help, Homer found Dam’s family, returned the documents he had taken from the body, and helped them locate and bring back the remains.
Thursday, November 8th
Library 321
4:10 PM
Wayne Karlin served in the Marine Corps in Viet Nam. He is the author of numerous books of fiction and nonfiction, including Lost Armies, The Wished-For Country, Rumors and Stones, Prisoners, and Marble Mountain. He is co-editor, with Le Minh Khue and Trong Vu, of The Other Side of Heaven: Post-War Fiction by Vietnamese and American Writers. His articles, essays, and book reviews have appeared in, among other publications, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, and The Nation. In 1998, he was awarded the Paterson Prize in Fiction, and in 2005, he received an Excellence in the Arts Award from the Vietnam Veterans of America. He has also received two fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts and five Individual Artist Awards from the State of Maryland. He recently retired as a Professor Emeritus of Language and Literature at the College of Southern Maryland.