Posts Tagged: Afghanistan

This Week in Short Fiction

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On Wednesday evening, Phil Klay’s Redeployment won the National Book Award for fiction, making it the first short story collection to win the award since Andrea Barrett’s Ship Fever in 1996. That’s 18 years. But what’s maybe more startling is that the collection, which takes multiple perspectives of people involved in and returning from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, stands nearly alone as a fictional account that has risen to the national level of attention since the war in Afghanistan began in 2003.

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Masha Hamilton

The Rumpus Interview with Masha Hamilton

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Journalist and novelist Masha Hamilton sits down with Maud Newton to discuss the influences behind her latest book, What Changes Everything, the intricacies of writing about conflict, and how her work in war zones has helped shape her fiction. ...more

How Do You Say “Ollie” in Pashto?

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In Kabul, Afghanistan, Oliver Percovich runs an NGO unlike any other: a skateboarding school for kids, called Skateistan.

Interestingly, in a country where girls are generally not allowed to ride bicycles (and are even sometimes attacked for going to school), almost half of Skateistan’s students are female, which this blog post calls “the highest rate of female participation in skateboarding out of any country in the world.”

Rock on, sk8r bois and grrrls.

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Shit Turd and The Purple Light

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With this much self-awareness and meditation, residents such as myself tend to forget – or, rather, concentrate on forgetting – that Encinitas is also a half-marathon’s distance from the Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, which is roughly the size of Rhode Island ...more

Longing for Peace

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“On Sept. 11, 1948, my father, Khalilullah Nuristani, was born under the same burden of greatness. In retrospect, he must have believed that he could fulfill what had been his father’s unfulfilled destiny. My father became a tireless fighter for a free Afghanistan.”

Afghan writer Kakail Nuristani compiled photos, letters and documents from his father’s life, working with Adam Klein to tell a fascinating story that spans three-generations.

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