Bio
Hugh Martin is a veteran of the Iraq War and the author of In Country (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2018), The Stick Soldiers (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2013) and So, How Was the War? (Kent State UP, 2010). He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature, a Pushcart Prize, a Yaddo Residency, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a Sewanee Writers’ Conference Fellowship, a Prague Summer Program Fellowship, and he was the inaugural winner of the Iowa Review Jeff Sharlet Award for Veterans. His essays and poetry have appeared in various places including The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Grantland, The Sun, and The Kenyon Review.
Education
PhD, Creative Nonfiction, Ohio University, 2021
Wallace Stegner Fellowship, Stanford University, 2012-14
MFA, Poetry, Arizona State University, 2012
BA, English, Muskingum University, 2008
Professional Experience
2022-Present: Assistant Professor of English, U.S. Air Force Academy
2021-22: Visiting Assistant Professor, The College of the Holy Cross
2016-21: Graduate Teaching Assistant, Ohio University
2014-16: Emerging Writer Lecturer, Gettysburg College
2012-14: Wallace Stegner Fellow (Poetry), Stanford University
2009-12: Teaching Assistant, Arizona State University
2001-2007: M1A1 Tanker, Army National Guard (2004, Operation Iraqi Freedom)
Publications
Books (Poetry)
In Country (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2018)
The Stick Soldiers (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2013): Winner of the 2011 A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize, BOA Editions, Ltd. (selected by Cornelius Eady); finalist for the 2011 Yale Series of Younger Poets
So, How Was the War? (Kent State University Press, 2010): Winner of the 2008 Wick Student Chapbook Competition (selected by Maggie Anderson)
Poetry
The Gettysburg Review, Summer 2018: “In Country”
The Sun, July 2018, Issue 511: “All the While the Women”
The Cincinnati Review, miCRo, Nov. 29, 2017: “Iraq Good”
War, Literature & the Arts, Vol. 30, 2018: “Lana”; “.50-Cal. Gunner (from a sequence)”: “0000-0400 Hours: Guard Duty with Elbow”; “Iraqi Civil Defense Corps”; “Route Willow, Jalula Bridge”; “ICDC HQ Building”; “Tigris Crossing”
The New Yorker, Feb. 1, 2016: “.50-Cal. Gunner”
Boston Review, July/August 2015: “Suspicious Bag, LSA Anaconda”
The New Republic, August 25, 2014: “Burn Detail”
Michigan Quarterly Review, Volume 52, Number 1, Winter 2013: “Nights in the Quadrilateral Pool of Sawdust and Sweat,” “The Range,” “The Summer of Crawling,” “Desert Nocturne,” “The First Engagement,” “Barracks Dream,” “Demobilization”
Crazyhorse, Number 80, Fall 2011: “Sonnet, M16 A2 Assault Rifle”
The Kenyon Review, Spring 2012, Vol. XXXIV, No. 2: “Spring in Jalula”
Alaska Quarterly Review, Fall & Winter 2011, Vol. 28, No. 3-4: “After Curfew”
War, Literature & the Arts, Volume 24, 2012: “Responding to an Explosion in Qarah Tappah,” “The Raid”
The American Poetry Review, Vol. 41/NO. 2, March/April 2012: “The Stick Soldiers,” and “Doc’s Kill”
Non-Fiction
The American Poetry Review, May/June 2024: “End of Message: On Norman Dubie”
The American Scholar, Dec. 14, 2023: “Shooting a Dog”
GQ, June 19, 2023: “The King and I”
The Atlantic: “Our Highways Are an Ever-Expanding Museum of America’s Wars” (Dec. 31, 2021)
Ninth Letter, Vol. 18, No. 1, Spring/Summer 2021: “Beautiful Machine.”
The Cincinnati Review, 18.1, Spring 2021: “See the Lady”
Gulf Coast, Winter/Spring 2020: “Shrapnel”
VFW Magazine, April 2020: “Veterans Turn War Experiences into Poetry”
Grantland, June 10, 2014: “Cheering for LeBron in Jalula”
The New York Times “At War” blog, Aug. 27, 2012: “Learning a Language, and Relearning a Country”
Reviews & Criticism
Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies: “No Cheap Realizations: On Kathryn Rhett’s ‘Confinements’” (Summer 2022)
The Literary Review, Fall 2020, review of The Nail in the Tree: Essays on Art, Violence, and Childhood by Carol Ann Davis
The Kenyon Review, February 2020: review of The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq by Dunya Mikhail
Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction, Feb. 7, 2020: review of The Longer We Were There: A Memoir of a Part-Time Soldier by Steven Moore