War writing is an act of witness. It seeks to bring from the battlefront a way of connecting readers to an experience said to defy the power of words. Join these extraordinary journalists, who put themselves on the front line so we can know the terrible truths behind the headlines, for a discussion about the difficulties reporting the devastating facts of war. Deborah Amos is an award-winning correspondent who reported on the Gulf War in 1991, and more recently, Iraq for NPR. Philip Gourevitch has reported on the genocide in Rwanda, and Arnon Grunberg has made numerous trips to Iraq from where he has recently returned. The Humvee Sebastian Junger was riding in was hit by a land mine when he was in Afghanistan working on his forthcoming book War and the award-winning documentary Restrepo, and Daniele Mastrogiacomo’s ordeal of being kidnapped and held hostage is every journalist’s worst nightmare.
• Kathleen Hill: The room was packed for this panel, people standing, etc. I had attended the New European Fiction event just before, in the same space, and now the sense of intimacy that had animated that panel was gone. [more]
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