The Watershed Reading Series is pleased to present a reading by seven military veterans: Sylvia Bowersox, Doug Bradley, Scott Schultz, Nathan Lewis, Daniel King, Yvette Pino, and William Schuth. The reading will be followed by the opening reception for an exhibit by artist and veteran Eric Garcia.
In Good Company: A Reading by Veterans
Sylvia Bowersox served one tour in Iraq as an Army broadcast journalist, and two tours in Baghdad as a State Department portfolio press officer. She has a MA in English from Chico State University, and is now a MFA student in the Creative Writing Workshop at the University of New Orleans. She lives with PTSD, and writes about her experiences in both wars. She has been honored by multiple Pushcart nominations. Her work has appeared in the journal 0-Dark-Thirty, Tethered by Letters, Solstice Literary Magazine, Mortar Magazine, Bramble Literary Magazine, The Washington Post, and the anthology, It’s My Country Too. She lives in Wisconsin with her veteran husband, Jon and her Black Labrador service dog, Timothy.
Doug Bradley is a Vietnam veteran from Madison, Wisconsin, who has written extensively about his Vietnam, and post-Vietnam, experiences. Following graduation from college, Doug was drafted into the U.S. Army in March 1970 and served as an information specialist (journalist) at the Army Hometown News Center in Kansas City, Missouri, and the U.S. Army Republic of Vietnam (USARV) headquarters near Saigon. Following discharge and graduate school, Doug relocated to Madison in 1974, where he helped establish Vets House, a storefront, community-based service center for Vietnam-era veterans.
A member of the Deadly Writers Patrol, Doug is the author of DEROS Vietnam: Dispatches from the Air-Conditioned Jungle and co-author (with Craig Werner) of We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War, which Rolling Stone magazine named “the best music book of 2015.”
Nathan Lewis is an Iraq War veteran who now writes and makes art. He facilitates Combat Paper workshops and has two books of writing published with Combat Paper Press. He lives in the Finger Lakes region of New York and his firewood is stacked neatly for the coming winter.
Yvette M. Pino served with the 101st Airborne Division from 2002-2006. She earned a BFA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2011 and received a Certificate in Museum Studies from Northwestern University in 2018. She currently works for The Wisconsin Veterans Museum as the Traveling Art Exhibit Coordinator, serves on the Madison Arts Commission, and sits on the board of the National Veteran Art Museum. She has published stories with The Warhorse and in See Me for Who I am: Student Veterans’ Stories of War and Coming Home.
Scott Schultz founded The Heartbeat Center for Writing, Literacy and the Arts, Inc. in 2001 to help people realize writing and arts rewards in the same ways teachers have helped him realize those rewards. Schultz spent nearly 40 years working as a journalist and newspaper editor. He was raised on a central Wisconsin dairy farm where, during his high school years, he realized his interest in writing and journalism. He honed his writing skills while serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, and then returned to his Wisconsin roots to work in the newspaper business. During his newspaper career, Schultz never forgot his rural roots and connection with the soil first tilled by his great-great grandfather. Some of his work was compiled into a book, Rural Routes and Ruts, which has been used as required reading in university courses. His essays also were used in a national rural life project.
Poet & editor William Schuth, a native of the Driftless Area, grew up in small communities on both banks of the upper Mississippi River. After graduating from culinary school in 2002, he enlisted in the Marine Corps. In 2004 he deployed to Iraq’s Al-Anbar Province with Echo Battery, 2nd Battalion, 11th Marines; in-country, Echo was employed by Regimental Combat Team 7 as a counter-battery fire artillery unit and provisional rifle company in several areas around Al-Anbar, including Camp MEK/Fallujah, Haditha Dam, Al-Asad Airbase, Camp Korean Village, FOB Trebil, and FOB Waleed. William’s poetry seeks to reconcile impressions of and experiences in the desert landscapes of Iraq, Kuwait, and the American Southwest with life amid the bluffs and river valleys of Minnesota and Wisconsin. William is the poetry editor of The Deadly Writers Patrol, a literary journal concerned with war and its aftermath. He resettled in Madison a decade ago.
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Arts + Literature Laboratory is located at 111 S. Livingston Street #100, Madison, Wisconsin, 53703.
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