Author and Poet Victoria Kelly

The Scuttlebutt: Understanding Military Culture

Victoria Kelly is the author of Homefront, Mrs. Houdini, and When the Men Go Off to War. ​

Victoria graduated Summa Cum Laude from Harvard University. She received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and her M.Phil. in Creative Writing from Trinity College Dublin, where she was a U.S. Mitchell Scholar.​​

Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Best American Poetry, The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Southwest Review and dozens of other journals and anthologies. Her novel Mrs. Houdini was a People Magazine Best New Book, a USA Today New and Noteworthy Book, a Jeopardy Pick and a Publishers Weekly Starred Debut.

Her new book HOMEFRONT is inspired by her experiences as the wife of a fighter pilot during three wartime deployments, this collection follows women whose lives have been impacted by war and military service as they struggle with their fragile ideas of home.

In “Prayers of an American Wife,” a Navy wife grapples with loneliness when she discovers that her neighbor, also a Navy wife, is having an affair while their husbands are deployed on the same aircraft carrier. Tensions rise in “The Strangers of Dubai” as a soldier on leave tries to buy his wife a souvenir from an Afghan vendor. After attending eight funerals with fellow military wives whose husbands died in the Iraq war, the protagonist in “Finding the Good Light” divorces her Navy husband and tries to start a new life as a movie star. These, along with the eleven other stories in this collection, explore the emotional landscape of the resilient women who remain on the homefront.

Kelly’s stories offer readers an intimate, eye-opening look into the sacrifices and steadfastness of military family members.

https://www.victoria-kelly.com/

Homefront - https://bit.ly/49im7cD

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To find out more information about the Veterans Breakfast Club and view our upcoming schedule of online and in-person events, visit our website at: http://www.veteransbreakfastclub.org/

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