Hugh Martin
Hugh Martin, a Ph.D. student in Creative Nonfiction, was awarded a 2019 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Poetry.
“I plan to use the time and resources to continue work on a longer manuscript focused on my leave from Iraq in 2004; I also plan to work on various poetry projects and longer essays about Iraqi interpreters,” Martin states.
Martin’s work draws on his experiences as an Iraq War veteran; he served six years in the Army National Guard as an M1A1 Tanker. His most recent book, In Country, interrogates issues pertaining to the military, the Middle East, Sept. 11, and soldiering.
Martin’s second book, In Country
The National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowships program offers generous grants to published creative writers that enable recipients to set aside time for writing, research, travel, and general career advancement. Applications are reviewed through an anonymous process in which the only criteria for review are artistic excellence and artistic merit.
The NEA assembles a different advisory panel every year, each diverse with regard to geography, race and ethnicity, and artistic points of view.
The NEA reports, “we typically receive more than 1,500 applications each year in this category and award fellowships to fewer than 3% of all applicants.”
Martin is the author of In Country (BOA Editions 2018), The Stick Soldiers (BOA Editions 2013, winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize) and So, How Was the War (Kent State University Press, 2010). A recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, a Sewanee Writers’ Conference Fellowship, and a Yaddo Residency, he was the inaugural winner of the Iowa Review Jeff Sharlet Award for Veterans. His poem, “Iraq Good,” was awarded a Pushcart Prize in 2018. Additionally, he was the 2014-15 Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College. Martin’s essays and poetry have appeared in PBS NewsHour, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Grantland, American Poetry Review, and The Kenyon Review.
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