Andrew Szala separated from the Army in May after eight years. He served as a Combat Medic and Licensed Practical Nurse, and saw combat in Afghanistan in 2009/2010. In the past year, he’s lost four friends to suicide and PTSD-related issues, in addition to witnessing firsthand many of the issues today’s veterans face. He appreciates that someone is taking the time to actually let veterans’ voices be heard
Kelli Hewlett is a Registered Nurse finishing her Bachelor’s degree in nursing at San Diego State University. She was born into a military family at Fort Jackson, South Carolina which is where she started her own army career 18 years later. She got her start in health care as a Licensed Practical Nurse. She fell in love with the profession and efforts to assist the public. For her work in aiding the community she has received a Certificate of Recognition from California State Senator Joel Anderson.
Mariah Smith is an active duty military police officer currently assigned to Fort Bragg as the XO for a Criminal Investigation Battalion. She grew up in a Navy family but never liked the water, so she decided to join the Army and jump out of airplanes. She has deployed six times in support of the War on Terror including tours as a platoon leader and company commander. She is most proud of leading a platoon in the initial invasion into Iraq in 2003. Her most recent three deployments have all been in Afghanistan, a place she has come to love but not quite understand. Her other assignments have included serving as a Congressional Fellow for Congressman Steve Israel, an Inspector General for HQDA, and as Education Director for the CSA’s Soldier for Life office. She is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and the FBI National Academy, session 256. When she is not deployed she enjoys riding horses, hanging out with the pets, and spending all her deployment money to fix up old houses (currently on #3). In the evenings she tries to write while limiting herself to one glass of bourbon. She is not always successful.
Lisbeth Prifogle served her country as a United States Marine officer, and is currently working on a memoir about her experiences in a war zone. Lisbeth holds an MFA from Antioch University – Los Angeles. Her work was featured in Poem Memoir Story, The Splinter Generation, Citron Review, and In the Know Travel. Lisbeth is an active member of the Bayou Writers Club where she gives presentations and writes articles about the craft and business of writing. She lives in Louisiana.
Sierra Crane was born and raised in rural Pennsylvania, homeschooled by her mother, and taught life lessons by her father. She joined the Army National Guard on her 17th birthday, ready to get out and experience the world. She served 2 tours in Iraq before her 8 years were up, discovered the Army wasn’t all that she wanted, and came home to realize she never really gave much thought to what she wanted to do for the rest of my life if it wasn’t the military. Writing was a great way to escape those feelings of loss and regret after her enlistment was up. Now back in her hometown, she is serving in a different way, as a police officer, and thinks she’s finally found where she belongs.
Combat Arts San Diego is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides art classes, museum tours, art exhibitions, and public art opportunities for post-911 combat veterans. Using art as a catalyst between the veteran creator and the public viewer, Combat Arts facilitates and exhibits combat veteran generated artwork to inform and educate the public about veteran’s issues.
By making, viewing, and exhibiting art, veterans experience increases in self-confidence, community engagement, and self-expression, as well as reductions in physical pain, anxiety, and depression. Creating visual art makes it possible for veterans to communicate with pictures what is difficult to put into words.
We believe that art is inherently therapeutic, as we are not art therapists. Our program employs professional artists and art teachers to work with veterans to show them both the technical and conceptual aspects of art making, as well as the occupational components of becoming an artist. Through our art classes, veterans learn how to develop an artistic practice that helps them to independently cope with their symptoms, resulting from Post-traumatic Stress, so that they are not solely reliant on outside help.
We directly serve active duty service members and veterans within Department of Defense and Veteran’s Administration residential treatment facilities, where they are receiving treatment for mental health issues and substance abuse. In addition, our program extends out into the public where we encourage community interaction between veterans and civilians through veteran art exhibitions and public art projects.
Combat Arts recognizes that successful transition off the battlefield requires collaboration and partnerships with other nonprofit agencies and institutions. Currently, we are partnered with the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Timken Museum of Art, So Say We All, Veteran Art Project, and Veteran’s Village of San Diego.
Founder and artist, Elizabeth Washburn, has been actively working with combat veterans transitioning back to life outside of the war zone since 2007. In addition to her Masters in Fine Art, she has over 15 years of teaching experience teaching diverse populations of students ranging from inner city youth to seniors. You can see her art at www.ewashburn.com.
For more information please visit: http://www.combatartssd.org
Casondra Brewster was born in Detroit, Mich. in 1966 to a young, blue-collar couple. The oldest of four children, she was not content to stay in the Rust Belt and left home very young to travel the world. She lived in Hawaii for some time, and then ended up going to college in Wyoming. After a devastating personal loss in late 1992 she left college and joined the U.S. Army in 1993, which continued her world travels, and her writing. She served as a public affairs specialist, earning the Thomas Jefferson Military Journalist of the Year award in 2001. In 2011, after completing her B.A. in Arts and Literature, she finally left the clutches of the military to pursue a full-time freelance writing career. Within a month her first fiction short-story was published. Currently she resides in the Cascade Foothills — just a short car-ride from Seattle — with her partner, children, a shelter-rescue dog, and a 55-gallon aquarium of fresh-water fish. When not writing, she tends her urban farm; you can read about her daily life on her blog at Casz’s Fiction Farm.
After graduating from the United States Coast Guard Academy in 2008, Tenley Lozano spent five years as an officer in the US Coast Guard. During her tenure, she worked in the engineering department on a ship that patrolled the Pacific Ocean from Vancouver to the equator chasing drug runners. She then attended Navy Dive School and spent two years as a Coast Guard Diver at Maritime Safety and Security Team 91109.
Tenley’s work has appeared in Permission to Speak Freely, O-Dark Thirty, The War Horse, and in the anthology Incoming: Veteran Writers on Returning Home. She was awarded Crab Orchard Review’s 2017 John Guyon Literary Nonfiction prize for an essay about PTSD and finding healing through backpacking with her dog. Tenley graduated from Sierra Nevada College in 2016 with an MFA in Creative Writing. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter, and visit her website.
Francisco Martínezcuello was born in Santo Domingo, República Dominicana and raised in Long Island, New York. He has been writing short stories and journaling since he was a teenager. His passion for literature and writing continued throughout his 20 years of Marine Corps service and helped him understand the impact of war on our nation’s veterans. He is a product of the 2015 Writer’s Guild Foundation Veteran’s Writer’s retreat, the 2015 Veteran’s Summer Writing Intensive at Marlboro College sponsored by Words After War, and a participating member of So Say We All and their monthly Greenroom Writers Workshop. His first fiction short story The Gift, was published in the April 2016 issue of the Dominican Writers Association (http://www.
Anthony Moll (@anthonywmoll) is a poet, essayist and educator. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts and is completing his PhD in poetry and Queer theory. His chapbook about the melancholy of the modern workplace; Go to the Ant, O Sluggard; is available now from Akinoga Press. His debut memoir won the 2017 Non/Fiction Prize from The Journal, and will be published in late 2018 by Mad Creek Books.
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