Former Marine Wins Literary Prize

Phil Klay, a former Marine Corps captain, has won the 2015 Warwick Prize for Writing for a collection of short stories he authored that were based on his experiences during the war in Iraq. The collection, called Redeployment, includes stories of a spouse greeting her husband as he returns from the war, a priest consoling combatants, and an outsider trying to understand the conflict. Warwick College in the United Kingdom awards the prize annually, with criteria varying each year. In 2015, the school sought stories that best expressed ideas regarding “Instinct,” according to its Web site. In awarding Klay the prize, Warwick stated, “Written with a hard-eyed realism and stunning emotional depth, Redeployment takes readers to the frontlines of the wars in Iraq, asking us to understand what happened there, and what happened to the soldiers who returned.”