Richard Currey
Photo by Vivian Ronay

Richard Currey was born in West Virginia in 1949, was raised there and in Ohio, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Canada. Drafted in 1968, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and was detached to the Marine Corps, trained as a combat medic, and assigned to various infantry and reconnaissance units. He began publishing poetry after his discharge in 1972, and he drew upon his military experiences in Crossing Over: The Vietnam Stories. His first novel, Fatal Light, became an international bestseller published in 11 languages. Fatal Light received the Special Citation of the Hemingway Foundation as well as the Vietnam Veterans of America’s Excellence in the Arts Award. Currey’s second novel, Lost Highway, looks at the impact of the Vietnam War on an American family and was called "a rich, incisive American fable" by the Boston Globe. Currey’s short stories have received O. Henry and Pushcart Prizes and have been widely anthologized. A former military book reviewer for Newsday, he is now a contributing editor for The Veteran. A recipient of National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in both poetry and fiction, Currey has also received the D. H. Lawrence Fellowship in Literature and the State of West Virginia’s Daugherty Award in the Humanities.

A chopper came down into the LZ, rotors cutting a space in the rain. The weight that started in my stomach grew in my lungs like a tide. There had been contact near Fire Base Louise, no survivors. We bagged the captain and the legless lance corporal and called Motor T to get the bodies to Graves. I went out behind the tent, feeling it all in slow motion. I was sure I was forgetting every detail. Nausea swam behind my ribs and I could not remember my name ...

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