Michael Todd
Assistant Spectrum Editor
Nine years ago, alum Kevin Powers made a decision that would shape his early career as it is currently unfolding today.
In 2003, Powers re-enlisted in the National Guard after having enlisted directly out of high school in 1998. Powers made this decision knowing that he would be sent overseas to fight in a war that was, at the time, only a few years old. Now, years after his tour ended in 2005, Powers’ war experiences have manifested in the form of his highly acclaimed first novel, “The Yellow Birds.”
Told from the point of view of 21-year-old army grunt John Bartle, the novel details not only the trauma of warfare as it occurs but also the continued trials encountered after returning home and the effects inflicted on the families of those fighting abroad.
Last week, Powers was nominated as one of five finalists in the fiction category for the National Book Award. The winners of his and other categories will be announced during a ceremony taking place at Cipriani Wall Street Nov. 14.
The novel is more a work of fiction than a recount of Powers own experiences, informing readers of the horrors of war.
In an interview with Richmond Magazine last week, Powers admits that, regardless of being semi-autobiographical, the novel “(is) a work of the imagination that probably wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t have the experiences I had. The characters aren’t based on anybody I know. … Some of the descriptions come from places I saw … or things I might have heard people say in passing, but the story isn’t real. It isn’t anything I experienced.”
Powers was a heavy reader in his youth but not too concerned with academic excellence while in school. Though he wrote in private from the age of thirteen, it wasn’t until he attended VCU for his undergraduate degree that he began to consider the passion as a career.
“My time at VCU was essential,” said Powers in a VCU press release. “Getting the permission to think of myself as a writer, learning how to engage with literature and my own writing in new ways: all of this happened at VCU.”
“The Yellow Birds” was receiving extraordinary praise and gathering momentum well before its official release a month ago, when it was published by Little Brown and Co. on Sept. 11.
At the beginning of this year, the novel was placed on a short list of the ten most promising books of 2012 by Entertainment Weekly.
A review by Publisher’s Weekly in July of this year foreshadowed the popularity the novel would quickly gain among both the publishing and reading worlds.
Traditionally scrupulous New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani called the novel “a classic of contemporary war fiction” relatable to Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried,” which focused on the Vietnam War.
“The Yellow Birds” is said to be the first significant novel surrounding the Arab wars, and as the next step or generation in a line of similar novels by Stephen Crane and Ernest Hemingway, contributing to an already rich literary history with apparent success.