Tahoe instructor pens war memoir
By Michael Doyle, Bee Washington Bureau
Fresno native Brian Turner packed his poetry and went to war. Now, he’s returned with an acclaimed memoir.
With “My Life as a Foreign Country,” Turner has earned both accolades and, it seems, a measure of peace. The former infantryman has also fleshed out what he previously hinted at in poems dug from the hard ground in Iraq.
“The landscape is war,” Turner said in an interview, not for the first time, “but the actual subject is love and loss.”
Turner, 47, is a thrice-published author. His first two volumes, “Phantom Noise” and “Here, Bullet,” were published by a small, quality outfit called Alice James Books. His latest, 212 pages of prose armored between hard covers, was published by W.W. Norton, which is big time.
Turner chairs the master of fine arts program at Sierra Nevada College on the North Shore of Lake Tahoe.