On November 16th, eleven of the 28 contributors met, along with family and friends, to launch Post Traumatic Press’s newest publication, Sound Off: Warrior Writers NJ, a collection of powerful poetry by veterans of World War II, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and the wars in Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan. There was food, drink, comradeship, and a reading--all in the beautiful and green-designed Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation headquarters.
Readers included the anthology’s editors, Jan Barry and Regina Mullen, as well as contributors Sarah Mess, Everett Cox, Ben Levine, Nancy Nygard, Joe Nygard, Jenny Pacanowski, James Yee, Dayl Wise and Walter Zimmerman.
“Warrior Writers saved my life,” says Sarah Mess, a mother of two in Branchburg, NJ who served with a U.S. Army field hospital in the war in Somalia in 1993. . . “Coming home, I felt disconnected and invisible,” Sarah told students at a New Jersey middle school. “War doesn’t leave you—it haunts you, so this program eases the burden,” she said of Warrior Writers.
