Phil Klay

Phil Klay was born in 1983 and is a US Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq during the war. He earned a BA from Dartmouth College and an MFA from Hunter College. After returning from his deployment in Anbar Province, he wrote about his experience and became one of the most important voices examining American involvement in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. His debut short story collection Redeployment (2014), which examines the experience of American soldiers returning from Iraq, won the National Book Award for Fiction. A viscerally honest exploration of the moral complexities of modern warfare, it was widely praised for its refusal of easy patriotism or sentimentality. His novel Missionaries (2020) explores the global spread of counterinsurgency tactics. He contributes essays and criticism to publications including The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post.